How many people remember the phrase "giant sucking sound"?
It gained notoriety when Ross Perot used it during a 1992 presidential debate
to criticize the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, that he said
would "suck" American jobs to Mexico. He warned NAFTA would send jobs
overseas where labor costs cheaper than here.
to criticize the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, that he said
would "suck" American jobs to Mexico. He warned NAFTA would send jobs
overseas where labor costs cheaper than here.
And, here we are almost 25 years later and we still hear about Americans losing
jobs, but only not due to a "giant sucking sound" coming from Mexico, it goes
deeper, to a unknown dark side.
jobs, but only not due to a "giant sucking sound" coming from Mexico, it goes
deeper, to a unknown dark side.
NAFTA was suppose to strengthen the economies of three nations, Canada, Mexico
and the United States, but two were economically damaged, not strengthened.
and the United States, but two were economically damaged, not strengthened.
The problem is due to what the intent of the NAFTA agreement really was, with
the primary beneficiaries being institutions, a desire which avoided detection.
the primary beneficiaries being institutions, a desire which avoided detection.
Worse, the "sucking sound" comes from the United States, not Mexico as 10-20
million illegals have come here to compete with American for scarce low pay jobs.
million illegals have come here to compete with American for scarce low pay jobs.
Nor, its no coincidence Mexicans are coming here for jobs, its directly due to its
govt committing economic 'treason', selling out its own people to enrich its ruling
class. And, on our side of the border, our own ruling class is equally culpable in
NAFTA's failure to fulfill its promise.
govt committing economic 'treason', selling out its own people to enrich its ruling
class. And, on our side of the border, our own ruling class is equally culpable in
NAFTA's failure to fulfill its promise.
How NAFTA did this can be found on a website, prospect.org in an article written
by Jeff Faux in 2003, a decade after Perot warned us. It offers many reasons for
NAFTA failing, on this link, http://bit.ly/1U2fXRE
Here are some highlights I selected. The full analysis goes into greater depth of what
deliberately as done that sabotaged the expected purity of the trade agreement.
My notes:
deliberately as done that sabotaged the expected purity of the trade agreement.
My notes:
of U.S.-educated economists and business people who took over the ruling
Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) to build a privatized, deregulated
and globalized Mexican economy.
Among their chief objectives was tearing up the old corporatist social
contract in which the benefits of growth were shared with workers, farmers
and small-business people through an elaborate set of institutions connected
to the PRI.
NAFTA provided no social contract. It offered neither aid for Mexico nor
labor, health or environmental standards. Corporate investors were protected,
everyone else was on his or her own.
NAFTA is the nation-building template imposed on developing countries by recent
corporate-dominated U.S. administrations and their client international finance
agencies. It is the model for the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas
Americans' own understanding of NAFTA's impact on the Mexican people is
obscured in part by the gap between what Mexican elites tell U.S. elites and
what Mexicans tell one another.
NAFTA's critics did not doubt that it would stimulate more trade; but they rightly
predicted any benefits would go largely to the rich while the middle class and the
poor would pay the costs, and that the promised growth would not materialize.
B. NAFTA is not the cause of all Mexico's economic troubles, but it has clearly
made them worse. Since NAFTA's inception in 1994 -- indeed, for the 20 years of
neo liberal "reform" the Mexican middle class has shrunk and the number of poor
has expanded.
C. During his 2000 campaign, Mexican President Vicente Fox promised that under
his six-year term the country would grow 7 percent per year. Two and a half
years after his inauguration, growth has averaged less than 1 percent.
The northward migration continues. Between the U.S. censuses of 1990 and 2000, number
of Mexican-born residents in the United States increased by more than 80%.
Some half-million Mexicans come to the United States every year; roughly 60% of
them are undocumented.
D. Behind the laissez-faire rhetoric, Mexico's neoliberals were pursuing a large
scale program of government social engineering aimed at forcing Mexico's rural
population off the land and into the cities, where it could provide cheap labor
for foreign investment that the new open economy would attract.
The PRI reformers did not, they intended to depopulate rural Mexico. After the
treaty was signed, reformers pulled the rug out from under the rural peasantry. Funding
for farm programs dropped from $2 billion in 1994 to $500 million by 2000.
E. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress massively increased subsidies for corn, wheat,
livestock, dairy products and other farm products exported to Mexico. American
farmers now receive 7.5 to 12 times more in government help than Mexican farmers
do, a "comparative advantage" enabled U.S. agribusiness to blow thousands of
Mexican farmers out of their own markets.
When displaced farmers arrived in nearby cities, few jobs were waiting. NAFTA
concentrated growth along Mexico's northern border, where factories processed
and assembled goods for the then-booming U.S. consumer market. Between 1994 and
2000, urban employment doubled while it stagnated in rest of the country.
F. Neoliberalism was supposed to reduce the income gap between Mexico's rich
border states and the poorer ones in the country's middle and south. It did not.
In the depressingly familiar pattern of privatization the world over -- the PRI
reformers sold off the banks to friends, then bailed out the new owners when
the peso collapsed a year after NAFTA was passed.
Made whole with more than $60 billion of the taxpayers' money, crony capitalists
resold their banks at a handsome markup to foreign investors. For example, an
investment group bought Mexico's 2nd largest commercial bank for $3.2 billion
and sold it to CitiGroup for $12.5 billion. The global bankers were more interested
in taking deposits and making high-interest-rate consumer loans than in developing
Mexico's internal economy.
Meanwhile, its booming investment in the exporting sweatshops of the north created
a social and ecological nightmare. Rural migrants overwhelmed already inadequate
housing, health and public-safety infrastructures, spreading shantytowns, pollution
and crime.
G. The same global corporate coalition that forced NAFTA through Congress also
successfully lobbied the United States to sponsor China's full entry into the
World Trade Organization (WTO), paving the way for a huge increase in Chinese
exports to the United States.
This led to an estimated 200,000 maquiladora jobs have left Mexico for China, where
workers can be had for one-eighth the Mexican wages in the last two years.
In a deregulated world, there is always someone who will work for less.
Hope NAFTA would enable Mexico to export its way to prosperity has largely vanished.
H. The Mexican government, aided by U.S. foundations;
nongovernmental organizations,
is attempting to channel migrant remittances into quasi-governmental credit unions that
would provide capital to businesses and local governments. But migrants send money for
immediate consumption to maintain living standards of parents, grandparents and children
in a depressed domestic economy.
But, it is an odd notion of economic development that rests on the meager savings of
low-wage Mexican workers in America while wealthy Mexicans regularly ship their
capital to New York, London and Zurich.
In fact, Mexico's oligarchs public focus on the condition of Mexican workers in the
United States has the great virtue of diverting political attention from the condition
of Mexican workers in Mexico.
I. As in many developing countries, the largest part of Mexico's economic problem lies
not in restricted export markets but in the stifling maldistribution of wealth and
power that restricts internal growth.
The gap between Mexico's rich and poor is among the worst in the Western Hemisphere,
and the rich hardly pay any taxes.
J. The testimony of hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers that each year making
the hard and dangerous trip north is evidence that, after two decades, the model is
not working in Mexico. If it is not working there, it is unlikely to work anywhere.
IN SUMMARY: Here we are, having to address a problem neither the United States or
Mexico should not have had. Neither country's "ruling class" cared about workers,
they were pawns to advance their own desires.
To the Mexican govt. its workers were expendable as its farming industry could not
sustain them, and portable as these farmers had no choice but to move north, and
further to the United States.
To the United States, the welcome mat was placed so all could see, the invasion of
foreign labor was needed so our farm industry would have the low cost labor to meet
the demand thanks to taxpayer subsidies.
is attempting to channel migrant remittances into quasi-governmental credit unions that
would provide capital to businesses and local governments. But migrants send money for
immediate consumption to maintain living standards of parents, grandparents and children
in a depressed domestic economy.
But, it is an odd notion of economic development that rests on the meager savings of
low-wage Mexican workers in America while wealthy Mexicans regularly ship their
capital to New York, London and Zurich.
In fact, Mexico's oligarchs public focus on the condition of Mexican workers in the
United States has the great virtue of diverting political attention from the condition
of Mexican workers in Mexico.
I. As in many developing countries, the largest part of Mexico's economic problem lies
not in restricted export markets but in the stifling maldistribution of wealth and
power that restricts internal growth.
The gap between Mexico's rich and poor is among the worst in the Western Hemisphere,
and the rich hardly pay any taxes.
J. The testimony of hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers that each year making
the hard and dangerous trip north is evidence that, after two decades, the model is
not working in Mexico. If it is not working there, it is unlikely to work anywhere.
IN SUMMARY: Here we are, having to address a problem neither the United States or
Mexico should not have had. Neither country's "ruling class" cared about workers,
they were pawns to advance their own desires.
To the Mexican govt. its workers were expendable as its farming industry could not
sustain them, and portable as these farmers had no choice but to move north, and
further to the United States.
To the United States, the welcome mat was placed so all could see, the invasion of
foreign labor was needed so our farm industry would have the low cost labor to meet
the demand thanks to taxpayer subsidies.
What occurred on both sides of the border was not just circumstance, rather it was
orchestrated, to advance globalization, structured govt. public private partnerships
where workers are societal "tools" to be used or discarded.
At some point a serious postmortem will be written which will take readers behind
the curtain to see how things are done and destroy the myth the people we entrust
our nation's governance work in our best interests.
Please add feedback in comments section below, or email ajbruno14@gmail.com "Point of View" blog http://ajbruno14.blogspot.com/
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