John, Paul Krugman has an article on NAFTA you might find interesting.
"HOW IS NAFTA DOING? It's Been Hugely Successful - As A Foreign Policy" http://www.pkarchive.org/trade/nafta.html He writes "NAFTA's defenders are saddled with a big public relations problem: The agreement was sold under false pretenses. Over the protests of most economists, the Clinton Administration chose to promote NAFTA as a job-creation program. Based on little more than guesswork, a few economists argued that NAFTA would boost our trade surplus with Mexico, and thus produce a net gain in jobs. With utterly spurious precision, the Administration settled on the figure of 200,000 jobs created--and this became the core of the pro-NAFTA sales pitch. The overall number of U.S. jobs, however, was never going to be noticeably affected by swings in our trade balance with Mexico. Our economy employs more than 120 million workers; it has added more than 8 million jobs since 1992. Job growth has slowed since 1994, but not because those 200,000 export-related jobs failed to materialize (the real culprit is the Federal Reserve's interest rate policies). If job creation isn't the point of NAFTA, what is? Another possible justification is the classic economic argument that free trade will raise U.S. productivity and hence living standards. Few economists, however, thought the pact would yield large gains of this type. Mexico's economy is simply too small to provide America with the opportunity for major gains from trade. Typical estimates of the long-term benefits to the U.S. economy from NAFTA are for an increase in real income on the order of 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent. So, where's the payoff from NAFTA for America? In foreign policy, not economics: NAFTA reinforces the process of economic and political reform in Mexico." Scott Merryman On Sun, 21 Apr 2002, john hull wrote: > Howdy, > > I recently visited a web page by a political scientist > that seemed to suggest that NAFTA was a failure. I'd > enjoy reading your opinions on the question of whether > NAFTA made the world a better place or a worse place, > or if it really had no impact. Also, if you could > also say why you feel this way or that would be > interesting as well. > > You're the best! > -jsh > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Games - play chess, backgammon, pool and more > http://games.yahoo.com/ >
