Nadir & Tom's favorite commentator Pat Buchanon has some good points here:
"When NAFTA was up for a vote in 1993, the Clintonites and their GOP fellow-travelers said it would grow our trade surplus, raise Mexico's standard of living and reduce illegal immigration. The opposite occurred. Mexico's standard of living is lower than it was in 1993, the U.S. trade surplus has vanished, and America is being invaded. Mexico is now the primary source of narcotics entering the United States."
I am curious for a response to this from my free marketeer heroes at CafeHyak.com and Larry Kudlow.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I can think of a few ways that Nafta has directly benefited the U.S. economy. For one, by stipulating that whole bunch of cheap subsidized corn swamp Mexico, the pact meant ruin for millions of Mexican farmers. With their local economies destroyed, these guys headed north to work in foreign-owned factories in population centers like Puebla and Monterrey, or sneaked into the United States to work in food service, agriculture, and construction. This enormous wave of cheap labor--freed from the land by US ag policy and the dictates of "free" trade--helped underwrite the largest and most robust economic expansion in US history. How? By putting severe downward pressure on corporate labor costs and thus inflation. Low inflation has allowed the Fed to follow a low-interest rate policy, which has led to stock market and real estate bonanza. There does not exist a prosperous American, not me, not Nadir, not nativists like Buchanan, Sixstringslinger, or that wretch Lou Dobbs, who hasn't benefitted directly from Nafta and the cheap-labor bonanza it created. Well, it's starting to run out. Mexican labor now costs marginally more than Chinese; in the race to the bottom, Mexico is being passed over. Time for a new trade pact. Welcome Cafta, boys: the Central American Free Trade Pact. Agribusiness is rubbing its paws together at the prospect of dumping a bunch of cheap corn into the southern regions of the ancient corn zone. Look formillions of Central American refugees to begin streaming north. Don't forget to spit on them for underwriting your prosperity.
While you reformed leftists are pondering my critique of Nafta, let me add this: what kind of free trade pact allows free exchange of capital and goods, yet limits the free flow of labor, which like capital should demand the right to flow where return is highest? I'll tell you what kind: one rigged in favor of the stonger economy.
Post a Comment