Mexico Trucker Online

MEXICO CITY – U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said Wednesday that NAFTA has been a boon for the United States, Mexico and Canada, but the three signatory countries should help small Mexican farmers who have suffered from the pact.When the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994, it contained a provision letting Mexico levy protective farm tariffs temporarily while upgrading its agricultural industry. That phase-in period ended Jan. 1, and Mexican farms – mostly tiny plots of 12 acres (5 hectares) or less – still lag behind.

Gutierrez, in Mexico City for a conference on strengthening Mexico’s transportation, energy and environmental infrastructure, said NAFTA has brought economic gains to all three nations – such as helping lower U.S. unemployment from 6.9 percent in 1993 to 4.9 percent last year. More than 30 percent of U.S. foreign trade is through the trade pact, he said.

“If NAFTA weren’t a success, the numbers wouldn’t be like that,” Gutierrez said.

He did acknowledge, however, the difficulties many small Mexican farms face and said the three countries need to collaborate to help dislocated farmers participate in “a more dynamic and growing economy.”

He did not give details or address complaints by farmers and activists that NAFTA has mostly benefited big producers here, while small growers struggle to compete with U.S. farmers who enjoy better transportation and distribution systems, lower costs and bigger subsidies.

Earlier this month, tens of thousands of demonstrators, marched through Mexico City to demand that officials renegotiate the removal of the last tariff protections for key crops like corn and beans.

Mexican officials say farmers are getting help, and that Mexico’s corn production is rising.

“What we want to do is continue strengthening NAFTA because it has been an enormous success,” Gutierrez said Wednesday at a news conference, speaking in both Spanish and English. “We need to make North America a place that continues attracting investment and is more competitive with the rest of the world.”

From the Boston Globe

But opting out of NAFTA or even amending the agreement would be foolhardy, unrealistic, or at least very difficult, according to several trade policy analysts who span the political spectrum.

“They’re kind of snookering the voters . . . throwing out a false hope,” said Alfred E. Eckes, the Ohio Eminent Research Professor in Contemporary History at Ohio University and the author and editor of several books about US trade policy Read the entire story.

Bashing NAFTA misses real reason for factory job losses

USAToday
Clinton, Obama hit wrong target. It’s productivity gains, not Mexico.

As they go at each other in Ohio, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama seem to be suggesting that the North American Free Trade Agreement has been a disaster. Both Democrats have vowed to renegotiate the agreement with Mexico and Canada or pull out of it altogether.

NAFTA opponents point to the 2.4 million U.S. manufacturing jobs that have disappeared since NAFTA took effect in 1994, a drop of about 14%. In Ohio, site of Tuesday’s hotly contested primary, manufacturing jobs are down by nearly 200,000, or 20%, during the same time.

NAFTA supporters — this page among them — usually respond by pointing out that 39 million jobs outside of manufacturing have been created in that time in the USA. Even Ohio has seen a net gain of 900,000 jobs, including 60,000 in finance, 80,000 in professional services and almost 190,000 in health care.

The reality is that NAFTA has relatively little to do with either the overall job losses or job gains. China is a far larger factor. But the number that best displays the nonsensical nature of the debate is 66% — the increase in the manufacturing output of American industry since 1993.

Continue reading.

Not the Mexicans! How astute, and something I have been saying all along.