NAFTA

[kristopher]

Nafta has cut a path of destruction through Mexico. Since the agreement went into force in 1994, the country’s annual per capita growth flat-lined to an average of just 1.2 percent -- one of the lowest in the hemisphere. Its real wage has declined and unemployment is up.

As heavily subsidized U.S. corn and other staples poured into Mexico, producer prices dropped and small farmers found themselves unable to make a living. Some two million have been forced to leave their farms since Nafta. At the same time, consumer food prices rose, notably the cost of the omnipresent tortilla.

As a result, 20 million Mexicans live in “food poverty”. Twenty-five percent of the population does not have access to basic food and one-fifth of Mexican children suffer from malnutrition. Transnational industrial corridors in rural areas have contaminated rivers and sickened the population and typically, women bear the heaviest impact.

Not all of Mexico’s problems can be laid at Nafta’s doorstep. But many have a direct causal link. The agreement drastically restructured Mexico’s economy and closed off other development paths by prohibiting protective tariffs, support for strategic sectors and financial controls.

NYT: Under Nafta, Mexico Suffered, and the United States Felt Its Pain
Laura Carlsen is the director of the Americas program at the Center for International Policy.
NOVEMBER 24, 2013

[RiverLover]

1. The US still engages in slavery with these trade deals, so millionaires can get richer.

Mexico's wage crisis is so bad 'that it violates what’s stipulated in the Constitution'
Aug 2015
http://www.businessinsider.com/mexicans-get-paid-less-for-their-work-than-any-other-developed-country-2015-7

[kristopher]

2. Mexico 66th on Democracy Index (US is 20th)

Mexico ranks poorly as a democracy with an overall rating of 66 placing it 46 places below the US and 46th on the list of flawed democracies.

The US is crappy at 20th out of 20 "full democracies".

The Democracy Index is based on ve categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. Based on their scores on a range of indicators within these categories, each country is then itself categorised as one of four types of regime: “full democracies”; “ awed democracies”; “hybrid regimes”; and “authoritarian regimes”.

http://64.37.52.189/~parsifal/EIU2015.pdf

[kristopher]

3. And on top of everything else, the consequences of US Drug Prohibition

NYT: The Drug War and Mexico
JAN. 25, 2016

To the Editor:

Re “Mexico’s New Blood Politics” (Sunday Review, Jan. 17):

Ioan Grillo’s conclusion that the United States (and American taxpayers) “should use its drug-war aid to push harder” for anti-corruption and judicial reforms is off base.

As a political analyst living and working in Mexico for the last three decades, I have watched with horror how the United States-Mexico drug war strategy has led to the explosion of violence and criminal activity here. The deep-rooted complicity between government officials and security forces on the one hand and cartels on the other means that the training, equipment and firepower given in aid and sold to the Mexican government fuel violence on both sides.

The lines blur. The cartels are not fighting the state for political power; they are seeking to protect a $40 billion drug-trafficking business that has been converted into a war for control of territory, a war against the people.

Victim organizations that have organized throughout the country demand that the United States stop funding the drug war under any guise. They are the ones who have lost the most, and have the most at stake. We should finally listen to them.

LAURA CARLSEN

Director, Americas Program

Center for International Policy

Mexico City

[RiverLover]

6. But let's vote for more of the same!

Change is too scary.

[LWolf]

4. NAFTA: Just one more Clinton disaster.

[Octafish]

5. NAFTA served Banksters not People

All the good that can be done through trade "floods up," per plan.