NAFTA from Mexico's view

The fifth round of NAFTA talks did not go well.

United States officials have tried in recent weeks to cool tensions over the North American Free Trade Agreement by extending the timetable for renegotiating the pact and asking top officials to sit out the current round of talks in Mexico City.
But as the fifth round of talks concluded in the Mexican capital on Tuesday, tensions were still simmering, with Canada and Mexico telling the United States that it would make little headway with its current approach and Mexico firing its first warning shot with a tough counterproposal.
Robert Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, took aim at his Canadian and Mexican counterparts on Tuesday, saying “thus far, we have seen no evidence that Canada or Mexico are willing to seriously engage on provisions that will lead to a rebalanced agreement. Absent rebalancing, we will not reach a satisfactory result.”

It seems the Trump Administration went into these talks with the impression that they had the leverage, but it's been Mexico that has been the toughest negotiator.
Why is that? Because Mexico has gained very little from NAFTA.

Growth of 2.5 percent a year since 1994 is less than half the developing-world average. It’s pretty much the same as the U.S. and Canada. But even that’s misleading. Because Mexico’s population expands much faster, the economic pie has to be divided among more and more people. So the average Mexican earns less today, relative to U.S. and Canadian peers, than before Nafta.
“The main idea was to promote convergence in wages and standards of living,’’ said Gerardo Esquivel, an economics professor at the Colegio de Mexico. “That has not been achieved.’’ And what meager growth there’s been, says Esquivel, has mostly gone to “the upper part of the distribution.’’

mexico.png
In Mexico, NAFTA doesn't get much blame or credit.
It's really only important to the upper-class and the neoliberal establishment.
Which brings us to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the front-runner in the 2018 presidential polls.
He wants the NAFTA talks suspended until after the election.
One thing is for sure, if the NAFTA talks are still going on when Obrador takes power, it'll be extremely entertaining.

In a 90-minute interview Tuesday in New York, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the radical outsider who’s the early frontrunner in next year’s election, blasted Trump’s “campaign of hatred” against Mexican immigrants, accused him of violating human rights laws, called his border wall plan a “propaganda” tool and said he couldn’t wait to handle the renegotiation of Nafta himself.
“Pena is too quiet. And Donald Trump speaks very loudly,” Lopez Obrador said. “One doesn’t beg for liberty, one seizes it.”
It could be a foretaste of clashes to come. Mexico and the U.S. have enjoyed a cooperative relationship for decades. Trump has changed the dynamic. He’s gotten Mexicans so mad that, if the polls are right, they’re ready to elect a fiery nationalist of their own, a politician who’s spent years denouncing the way the economy is run in the interests of foreigners -- in some ways, a Mexican anti-Trump.

It's entirely possible that NAFTA could break in late-2018.

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divineorder's picture

Mexican citizen can get very little usable info from their press so that is probably what is behind the lack of interest.

FWIW here’s a bit on what AFL CIO are up to re dialog with Mexican Labor : NAFTA

...

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

divineorder's picture

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

thanatokephaloides's picture

..... your view of NAFTA is that of your Mexican sisters and brothers!

The Teamsters are right!

Diablo

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

divineorder's picture

@thanatokephaloides labor in the world perhaps they might like this :

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

@thanatokephaloides It's not that the idea of trade deals is so bad, it's that the country must entirely reorder itself to accommodate business, and business in return owes the country absolutely nothing.

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SnappleBC's picture

@Snode

What is "bad" is public policy that is based around the greed of the few rather than the benefit of the many. If TPP had written by a group of 500 labor activists rather than 500 corporate lobbyists I'd have a different view of it.

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A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard

@Snode

Except that these aren't trade deals, they're corporate/billionaire coups.

Legitimate trade deals are beneficial to all and do not subjugate the people and country to destructive profiteering by the powerful by stripping the people of the country of basic human and citizen rights, even to those of self-protection.

These rights being something that nobody has or can have any right to agree to sell, trade or give away by stealing them from those to whom these belong to pretend to some non-existent right of abuse of public office and the public trust to personally 'agree' that those self-interests who would abuse and kill The People to achieve their own goals can do so, under 'might makes right law'.

Those public servants who try to con The People that they have to accept slavery imposed by the betrayal to hostile outside agencies of those citizens which as a body are entrusting them with the responsibility, and paying them out of their public funding, to administer their country - belonging as a commons to the public and those to come in perpetuity - for the public good, are nothing more than traitors and have abandoned all legitimacy with such actions.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Azazello's picture

thanks for the reminder. Mexico is one of the most stratified countries in the world and, not coincidentally, one of the most corrupt. The Mexican Left been cheated out of elections for a long time, it will be interesting to see how Obrador does this time around.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

...Mexico and the U.S. have enjoyed a cooperative relationship for decades. Trump has changed the dynamic. He’s gotten Mexicans so mad that, if the polls are right, they’re ready to elect a fiery nationalist of their own, a politician who’s spent years denouncing the way the economy is run in the interests of foreigners ...

Good, change that 'foreigners' to 'destructive, ethic-and-empathy-devoid, pathologically power and greed-hungry self-interests' and that's what everybody needs to do - to not passively allow these to continue and increase their abuse of positions of power which they should never have been permitted to gain.

Of course, Canada's traitorous 'government' has signed the TPP, so we have more and bigger fights to come and especially the need for massive boycotting of all involved industries, if this will only wake people up enough to at least try to stymie some of the worst by not supporting their own destruction.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.