Thread: Did NAFTA Actually Help Mexico?

December 10, 2009, 2:40 pm

Did Nafta Actually Help Mexico?
By ELISABETH MALKIN

Henry Romero/Reuters
Nafta, signed by President Carlos Salinas of Mexico, left, and President Bill Clinton, has been in effect for almost 16 years.


Who benefited from the North American Free Trade Agreement? Given the continuing decline in American manufacturing jobs, many people assume the winner in the accord must have been Mexico.

Unions and a portion of the Democratic Party have argued that the accord helped push American jobs south of the border to Mexico, where companies can take advantage of low wages and lax regulation. When the issue emerged again last year during the Democratic primary, the benefits to Mexico were never questioned.

But a study released Wednesday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace finds that Mexico has fared poorly under the accord.

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/ ... opment.pdf

“After 15 years, it seems clear that Nafta’s promise of broad-based dynamic growth did not come true in Mexico,â€

Just another example of how government intervention never does as promised. Can I mention health care here and our corupt governments insistance that a bill is passed no matter what and no matter that 60+% of Americans don't want it?

It did nothing. NAFTA in effect is an immigration policy as people from both Mexico and Canada can get jobs here and a visa. It is hard for them to become legal residents. Look it up under immigration quotas and lottery. Yet we have hundreds of thousands if not millions of them in this country illegally.

avenger wrote:
"Just another example of how government intervention never does as promised. Can I mention health care here...."

I read that Obama's Chief of Staff, Rham Emmanuel, the "general" in charge of strategy to pass health care reform over the objections of the American people, played the same role in passing NAFTA under Pres. Clinton over the objections of many in the country and the Congress.