Nafta’s Promise, Unfulfilled

[groovedaddy]

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s former president, Carlos Salinas, used to promise that free trade and foreign investment would jump-start this country’s development, empowering a richer and more prosperous Mexico “to export goods, not people.”

Fifteen years after the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, only the first part of that promise has been realized.

Mexico’s exports have exploded under Nafta, quintupling to $292 billion last year, but Mexico is still exporting people too, almost half a million each year, seeking opportunities in the United States that they do not have at home.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will arrive in Mexico on Wednesday and President Obama will visit next month. Both are expected to emphasize the successes of American-Mexican economic cooperation, but it will be hard to ignore how much in Mexico has not changed under Nafta.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/business/worldbusiness/24peso.html?th&emc=th

[Justyce]

1. Well, the US has sure changed under

all the free trade agreements, and not for the better.

[dflprincess]

2. I think NAFTA is working just the way it was suppose to

and that is not a good thing.

[4_TN_TITANS]

3. Poetic justice that H. Clinton gets to do this uneasy dance

after B. Clinton signed NAFTA back when.