Quote:
Originally Posted by pablo-me
Thank you. How is NAFTA detrimental to mexico? Is it detrimental to the US as well?
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-Milton Friedman has argued that the North American Free Trade Agreement is actually not a "free trade" agreement, but rather is government managed trade. The essence of this criticism is that such trade agreements don't promote free trade, they inhibit it by implementing another level of bureaucracy on top of national governments. This can not only have a detrimental effect on trade, it results in an erosion of sovereignty for all nations involved and causes citizens and governments to be bound by decisions made by an unelected international body. -It should be noted that an increase in domestic manufacturing output and a proportionally greater domestic investment in manufacturing does not necessarily mean an increase in domestic manufacturing jobs-- it may simply reflect greater automation and higher productivity. Although the U.S. total civilian employment rate may have grown by almost 15 million in between 1993 and 2001, manufacturing jobs only increased by 476,000 between January 1, 1994 and January 1, 2001. Furthermore from 1994 to 2007, net manufacturing employment has declined by 3,654,000, and during this period several other free trade agreements have been concluded or expanded. -Several studies have concluded that NAFTA has destroyed hundreds of thousands of agricultural jobs in Mexico. An influx of imports has decreased the prices for Mexican corn by more than 70% since 1994. As a result, of the 15 million Mexicans who depend on the crop, many can no longer afford basic health care and the labor demanded of them has been increased. NAFTA has been criticized for allowing U.S. agricultural subsidies to artificially depress corn prices. In 2000, U.S. government subsidies to the corn sector totaled $10.1 billion, a figure ten times greater than the total Mexican agricultural budget that year. Other studies reject NAFTA as the force responsible for depressing the incomes of poor corn farmers, citing the trend's existence more than a decade before NAFTA's existence, an increase in maize production after NAFTA went into effect in 1994, and the lack of a measurable impact on the price of Mexican corn due to subsidized corn coming into Mexico from the United States, though they agree that the abolishment of U.S. agricultural subsidies would benefit Mexican farmers. So would having the rural Mexican farmers use their corn as a raw material instead of trying to sell it as an end product. Shipment out of rural areas adds a level of expense that reduces what they receive on sales of their corn. Cost of shipment also protects local producers from outside competition. An end product that costs more per pound results in more going to the farmers.
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