Word: naftas
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...city, the Commerce Department announced last month, with an average per capita income of $13,339 a year. But people on both sides are helping one another do the deals, cut the corners, take a region that was forever left behind and turn it into the New Frontier. The NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) prospectors saw in the opening of the border a chance to make a killing by taking factories that would otherwise head to Malaysia and plunking them down right across the border, where the average Mexican worker earns slightly more in a day than an American...
...reason, say critics, is that NAFTA all but sold Mexico?s campesinos up the Rio Grande by failing to challenge lavish U.S. and Canadian agricultural subsidies-the kind that all too often shut Third World farmers out of First World markets. Moreover, free trade has also failed to generate enough U.S. and other foreign investment in new industries and small- and medium-size businesses-and, as a result, hasn't created enough new Mexican jobs. Even when new jobs do appear, the nation?s unforgiving low-wage business culture-the dark shame of Mexico's political and economic leaders, which...
...Perhaps they should ask why NAFTA-which took effect 12 years ago amid promises to raise the fortunes of Mexico?s beleaguered workers-hasn?t done more to reduce desperate labor migration over the U.S. border. That illegal flow, about a million migrants a year, is as heavy as ever. (Just ask CNN's Lou Dobbs, who?s broadcasting live from Canc?n this week because he?s so aggravated about it.) NAFTA has not been an altogether bad deal for Mexico; it has buoyed the economy and improved opportunities for workers in the more technologically advanced north...
...wonder then that Andr?s Manuel L?pez Obrador, the leftist former mayor of Mexico City whose platform focuses on the poor, is the heavy favorite to win Mexico?s July 2 presidential election. L?pez has not been shy about suggesting that Mexico may need to renegotiate NAFTA, especially with regard to U.S. agriculture subsidies, a prospect that alarms the Bush Administration. In a recent stump speech, L?pez called unabated Mexican migration "proof of the Mexican economic failure" in the NAFTA era, and he called for a "new cooperation accord with the U.S." to address Mexico?s development...
...L?pez hasn?t yet made clear what that "cooperation accord" would entail. But his likely victory points up an undeniable reality: whether or not NAFTA is really to blame for continued rampant illegal immigration into the U.S., it certainly hasn't delivered on its promises to help curtail it. To destitute farmers in Oaxaca, that is reason enough to renegotiate at least parts of it. And if the U.S. is really serious about reducing illegal immigration, it might eventually be reason enough for Bush...