Reply #14: NAFTA and all the "Free Trade" agreements subjugate the Rights

[Vincardog]

of people to the benefits of MONEY. NAFTA was sold to us as a way to raise ?Mexican wages and help create a Mexican middle class that would buy our products and grow the demand for American made goods.
It was supposed to include provisions that guaranteed the Mexican manufacturers met the same environmental standards as their US counterparts.

Instead it opened the Mexican markets to subsidized US exports of Grain. The Mexican farmers could not compete with subsidized American agribusiness and went to town looking for work. The jobs available paid pennies an hour and offered no personal or environmental protections. The workers in an attempt to feed their families snuck across our border to work at BP or Con Agra or the California produce fields.

They drove the wages of working people in the USA down. This benefited the rich people who wanted to have house labor that they could exploit because they were "illegal" and had no labor or human protection.

Meanwhile the jobs that were in Mexico fled to the Philippines because the Mexicans were demanding 25 cents an hour. Then the jobs went to India. When the Indians could not keep up with the demand the jobs went to China.

All the benefits flow to the Rich "Owners" all the pain is passed to the workers.

It is unrestrained free capitalism it has failed before and it is failing now.