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After All These Years, Press Still Wrong on NAFTA |
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Going into the 2008 primaries, it’s clear America’s voters, concerned about their jobs and the impact of globalization, are rethinking the nation’s recent approach in shaping trade agreements that benefit corporations at the expense of working families. And that’s making a lot of policy wonks and their corporate mouthpieces noticeably nervous.
Just today, The Washington Post let loose in a vitriolic editorial, attacking Democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama for denouncing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). See, according to the Post, NAFTA has been a big boon for Mexico’s economy.
Not so, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. From the very first, the Post gets it wrong, asserting incorrectly that Mexico’s gross domestic product (GDP) quadrupled since 1987, when in fact, it grew by just over 67 percent in that period, Baker writes in Beat the Press. Seems the Post editorial writers didn’t adjust for inflation.
As Baker points out:
If we don’t adjust for inflation, then we can conclude that Mexico’s GDP quadrupled over the last 20 years. Of course, no reasonable person would ever assess growth without first adjusting for inflation, since it has no meaning. If we don’t adjust for inflation, Zimbabwe’s economy, wracked by hyperinflation of several thousand percent annually, is the fastest growing economy on the planet.
On the most basic measure of economic performance, per capita GDP, Mexico’s economy has been lackluster since 1994, growing just 1.5 percent a year, a slower pace than the growth rate in the United States under the Bush administration.
Check out CEPR’s analysis of reports that Mexico’s economy has gained since NAFTA. What the Post and other corporate media should acknowledge is that NAFTA has not been good for anybody but the corporate elite in any of the three countries that signed the agreement. According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the trade pact has failed workers in Mexico, Canada and the United States.
- In each nation, while workers’ productivity grew, their wages remained stagnant or dropped and the wealth of those at the top increased significantly.
- More than 1 million jobs that would have been created were lost in the United States.
- In Mexico, many of the new jobs that were created were low-wage with no benefits and no future.
- In Canada, the United States’s largest trading partner, wages stagnated and inequality increased.
Baker hits the nail on the head when he says:
NAFTA was about putting non-college educated workers in direct competition with their low-paid counterparts in Mexico, while maintaining the protection for the most highly paid professions (investment bankers, doctors, lawyers, editorial page writers). This redistributes income upward. The effect of NAFTA itself was limited, since it was a small part of a much larger trade agenda, but its opponents are not foolish to identify it as a cause of pain.
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Sure the press is still wrong on NAFTA. Why is that surprising? The media serves corporate America, and corporate America covets NAFTA and other anti-worker trade schemes.
And let’s not go overboard about how Clinton, Obama and Edwards have denounced NAFTA. Not one of them offered legislation to withdraw the US from NAFTA. Around election time they get all lovey-dovey with America’s working class, but once elections are over they return to their corporate sponsors’ folds.
Why wasn’t Representative Dennis Kucinich mentioned in the article? He is the only candidate who promises to withdraw the US from NAFTA, WTO, CAFTA, etc. (Now that’s getting it right!)
An alternative to corporate-controlled media is Democracy Now, Link-TV, and Bill Moyers’ Journal. You’ll hear the other side of the story and get facts that the corporate media withholds.
From the Washington Post article, after the denunciation of NAFTA by Edwards and Obama, Hilary’s comment: Feeling the heat, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) has distanced herself from the agreement, which her husband pushed through a Democratic Congress. “NAFTA was a mistake to the extent that it did not deliver on what we had hoped it would, and that’s why I call for a trade timeout,” she now says.
If NAFTA had been the financial boon for workers in Mexico, the US and Canada like Bill Clinton claimed, Hilary would be claiming NAFTA as her brainchild…..Wiser people warned Bill Clinton that the bill was not really in the best interest of workers, but he signed it anyway. The rest is history - corporations got the steak, workers got the bones.
I wish Bill Clinton would have listened to Hillary Clinton on NAFTA. Bill Clinton, a democrat, made a lot of promises and twisted a lot of arms, to narrowly pass NAFTA. Now with over twelve million illegal immigrants in this country undercutting the American workforce, putting pressure on our social programs and education institutions, we still have another major fight on our hands. I’m sure that one reason the cost of insurance is impacted by illegal immigrants not being able to pay for health care, and the cost is passed on to the insurance companies, who in turn, pass the cost on to the people who do have insurance. I’m a retired union worker, I’m finding harder and harder to cover the cost that are passed on to the insured because companies, and union cannot cover the increase in cost for the same coverage. I’m sure this the same problem facing state governments who are facing million and some cases billion dollar deficits.
Tinman -
Baloney! Your numers are pure baloney. Of the $2.2 trillion ($2,200,000,000,000) only about $3.3 billion is spent on health care for undocumented workers. (Way less than 1%)
To suugest that insurance companies are strapped is not reality. UnitedHealth Group gave its CEO (Michael McGuire) $1.6 billion in stock options. The fact of the matter is this: insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, and corporations owning for-profit hospitals are ripping the American people off! Big time!
As a retired union worker what has your union done to solve the crisis? Has your union endorsed HR 676? If not, why not?
Back in the 20’s and 30’s it was immigrant Okies who got scapegoated. Now it’s Latinos. Okies in the 20’s and 30’s were mostly anglo. Nonetheless, they performed work other Americans refused to do because the pay was lousy and the working conditions were atrocious. And they were accused of “undercutting the American workforce”!
Please go to FactCheck.org: Archive and click on October of 2006. Scroll down to: Republican Campaign Theme Debunked: Social Security for Illegal Immigrants. Give it a read. It is quite educational.
Congress has working people fighting amongs ourselves. Congress loves it! When we are at each other’s throats. we’re letting Congress off the hook for selling us out on NAFTA, WTO, CAFTA, etc.
Lastly, in regards to undocumented workers: Why is it a sin to want to work? And ask yourself this question: What WOULDN’T you do to feed your family?
People migrate to the US because NAFTA has devastated their homelands. They are the victims of corporate-controlled globalism. Why balme the victims?
Please accept this post in the spirit it was given: Solidarity! It is great you’re involved and voicing your opinion.