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NAFTA, which is short for the misleading name "North American Free Trade Agreement," is an excellent example of transnational businesses making life utterly shitty for average people.
- Prior to NAFTA most of Mexico was farmland. They farmed corn, which has been a Central American staple for literally thousands of years, and made good money too.
- Here in the United States, the government takes money from you, the taxpayer, to subsidize farmers and keep the price of corn 50% below market price. (By the way: Subsidies are the opposite of "free trade".) This allows ADM, ConAgra, and other consumers to make hamburgers and high fructose corn syrup on the cheap, and I suppose you must benefit at the end of all this because you, the American consumer, seem to really enjoy eating HFCS and blowing up like a balloon. Mexico doesn't have the tax money to support such insanity, nor would they want to--most of the population farms corn so such a subsidy would be financially absurd. It wouldn't be a good idea to take the American corn, since unlike us, Mexican farmers were eating their own corn and the U.S. doesn't produce enough to feed all of Mexico; allowing the subsidy to lower Mexican corn prices to unlivable levels would simply starve everyone. Luckily, import quotas prevented the Mexican market from being flooded with cheap American corn.
- NAFTA required Mexico to lift these quotas eventually, and they did so immediately.
- Before they even realized that they needed to switch crops, Mexican farmers were up to their necks in debt.
- Fortunately, Mexico's democratic constitution in 1917 had a provision guaranteeing poor rural farmers land to farm on, called ejidos.
- Unfortunately, NAFTA forced Mexico to amend their constitution to remove this provision.
- Lucky Mexican farmers got to sell their land and work in a factory. Unlucky farmers got their land seized by creditors and became homeless and penniless.
- What sort of factories can you build in Mexico that you can't built right here in the USA? Factories that spew toxic waste, of course. NAFTA's Chapter 11 provision allows companies to sue if the towns refuse to let them build toxic waste dumps and waste landfills within their borders. And yes, corporations have sued small Mexican towns just for trying to keep the town from becoming a giant puddle of sewage. And they have won. [1][2][3]
- Former Mexican farmers today are living in toxic waste dumps and sending their children to work in factories so they can pay back the debts they owe. They are no longer able to make their own food. Does this sound like a recipe for long-term prosperity to you?
Is it any wonder that Mexicans are border-hopping into Texas? They are literally fleeing for their lives. If they have to stay in Mexico they will die and their families will too.
By the way, NAFTA is often touted as a "free trade" agreement, as it claims, but it is actually a guarantee that there will be no free trade in North America. It sets up all sort of restrictions on trade. It is also a death sentence for the American manufacturing industry.
More NAFTA fun
- Before NAFTA, Mexico imported 2% of its corn. Now it imports 50%.
- We're exporting extra meat and poultry to Mexico as well.
- To prevent this whole mess Mexico had federally owned corn stores that would buy excess corn from farmers when the price dropped too low. This was ruled an infringement of NAFTA.
- The amount of food one can buy with a day's wages has been halved.
- NAFTA's planners actually planned for people to leave the countryside and work in factories, but that emigration never stopped. 300 people/day leave the countryside.
- Privatization of Mexican government services, which actually preceded NAFTA, was sped up. In other words, Mexican train manufacturers were replaced with big American companies who could do it cheaper.
- NAFTA was hoped to create investment in Mexican industry. In Guadalajara, multinations such as HP, IBM, and Intel built offices. The area was called "Silicon Valley South" in 1998. But by 2003 all these offices were relocated to China and 20,000 jobs were lost. The remaining manufacturers were on a contract basis.
- NAFTA ended the provision that forced American automakers to buy some percentage of auto parts from Mexico, immediately collapsing a large industry. So much for boosting the economy!
- Largest retailer in Mexico: Wal-Mart.
- One of Mexicans' biggest sources of income today: $23 billion of paychecks from illegal immigrants in the US.
- Without illegal immigration, families living under NAFTA cannot buy clean food, live in their own house, or send children to school.
- Illegal immigrants have no OSHA rights, or human rights such as the minimum wage, or the right to organize. In other words, unlike American citizens, they can be treated like expendable animals and placed in dangerous situations with no protection.
- Both NAFTA and the WTO recognized Canada's right to limit imports, while ignoring this right in Mexico.
Is it true that NAFTA is the first step to a North American Union?
Vicente Fox, one of NAFTA's signers, certainly thinks so. He said so on the Daily Show. But this is really besides the point. There is no sure evidence that NAFTA will open a door to our sharing a common market with Mexico with open borders and such. On the contrary: it contains all sorts of provisions to let Americans keep the market practices we have right now. We simply get to dump our excess onto Mexico.