NAFTA-Unaccomplished promises

Résumé du document

"Real wages in Mexico are lower today than when NAFTA was approved and have not kept pace with productivity gains."-This is the official view of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace about the successes of NAFTA on its 10th anniversary in 2004. NAFTA or the North American Free Trade Agreement is an agreement signed between United States of America, Canada and Mexico in 1994. The goal of NAFTA was to provide lower trade barriers and to encourage the trade between these countries. The creators of NAFTA supposed that a free trade agreement between these countries would be a good way to insure the development and foreign investments for Mexico, and new markets and labor force for United States and Canada.

Nevertheless even in the beginning this agreement had its negative sides and there were many opponents. Bill Clinton who was the President of United States had problems with the negotiation of the agreement. United State's Congress was not convinced that this agreement would not cause important environmental problems and they also wanted to protect the American working force.

In this critical review we will try to show in what measures NAFTA has taken and the impact that it had on three countries involved in the agreement. We will concentrate mostly on the United States and Mexico, since these two countries are the most pertinent parts in the agreement and since the position of Canada is rarely mentions even in the literature treating this subject. We will defend the position that NAFTA didn't achieve expected goals and that it didn't have promised benefits.

Extraits

[...] After the implementation of NAFTA it was necessary to increase environment regulation in order to cope with the economic growth. Nevertheless, statistics show that “1994 real spending on environmental protection declined by the equivalent of $200 million, or In order to improve environment protection there should be inspections that would control the implementation of environment-protecting norms. According to some sources the number of these controls also decreased with the implementation of NAFTA NAFTA resulted in geographical and sectoral polarization of investment, income and employment. [...]

[...] NAFTA has intensified environmental problems. The important parts of NAFTA were also environmental objectives. NAFTA agreement underlined that with economic growth countries will also see better environmental conditions and that better paid population will have increased environmental awareness. Nevertheless after the implementation of the agreement we didn't see positive results. Statistics provided by Mexico's National Institute for Statistics, Geography and Information Systems (INEGI) show that “Rural soil erosion grew by municipal solid waste by 108%, water pollution by and urban air pollution by 97%. [...]

[...] We will defend the position that NAFTA didn't achieve expected goals and that it didn't have promised benefits. Using some empirical proofs and reviews we will try to prove our stand. It is certainly true that NAFTA had some positive impacts and effects but we believe that in general it didn't bring desired results. When speaking critically about NAFTA it is important to underline that it doesn't mean the rejection of free trade. NAFTA is seen in this paper only as one of the examples of free trade that didn't work among many others that showed positive results. [...]

[...] Nevertheless, it is important to notice that NAFTA seriously intensified a process that was already underway; in fact, Mexico started a shift to free trade and economic liberalization since the 70s and this is why we should not only blame NAFTA for the current situation of Mexico. But, once again, it really intensified it. Today, we can study the fragile democracy of Mexico, its deteriorating income distribution, its problem of demographic prediction and other issues that NAFTA will not address as is it not its function. So is there a future to NAFTA, or an improvement to make? [...]

[...] The goal of NAFTA was to provide lower trade barriers and to encourage the trade between these countries. The creators of NAFTA supposed that a free trade agreement between these countries would be a good way to insure the development and foreign investments for Mexico, and new markets and labor force for United States and Canada. Nevertheless even in the beginning this agreement had its negative sides and there were many opponents. Bill Clinton who was the President of United States had problems with the negotiation of the agreement. [...]