EoW July 2008

EuroWire – July 2008

And he even roped Messrs Calderón and Harper into sharply

criticising a decision by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to scuttle a vote

on a free trade agreement with Colombia. Senator John McCain,

the presumptive presidential nominee of Mr Bush’s own

Republican party, is a supporter of NAFTA and in general a

proponent of free trade.

Under NAFTA, the world’s largest trade bloc, trade among America,

Canada and Mexico will have risen to an estimated $1 trillion by the

end of this year, from roughly $290 billion in 1994. But it has aroused

various discontents in all three signatory countries, especially

in the US where a downturn in the economy is exacerbating

fears about job security. Opponents of expanded international

trade say it helps businesses but threatens American jobs and

keeps wages from growing. Mr Bush claims that Mrs Clinton and

Mr Obama are employing anti-trade arguments to attract the votes

of working-class Americans.

Somewhat taken aback to find herself under fire from three

❈

heads of state, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi suggested

that her chamber might yet hold a vote on a trade agreement

with Colombia – if the Bush administration would consider

an expansion of unemployment benefits, and an increase in

training programmes to assist those US workers who lose their

jobs as companies move operations overseas.

“The American people want solutions on the economy and

less partisan rhetoric from the president,” Ms Pelosi said in a

statement. “Democrats have repeatedly told the president we

are willing to work with him in good faith to create jobs and

restore our economic strength.”

Mr Bush was not soothed. “She’s effectively killed [the deal

with Colombia],” he fumed, and reiterated his warning that

its failure would affect regional security by weakening the

Colombian president, Álvaro Uribe, and strengthening

Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez. Mr Chávez has been openly

contemptuous of the US, its president, and its policies in Latin

America.

As those who would be president focus

on Mexico, jobs lost to China go unremarked

Writing in the New York Times for 22

April, Elizabeth Malkin

points out that the Democratic candidates are replaying the

arguments made against the North American Free Trade

Agreement in the early 1990s, when opponents like the

Texas data-processing tycoon Ross Perot argued that it would

create a “giant sucking sound” of jobs moving to Mexico. But much

has changed since then. “For a start,” said Ms Malkin, “Perot Systems,

which he helped found, has set up a Mexican subsidiary.”

In the first years under NAFTA, jobs did leave the United States for

Mexico. But Ms Malkin noted that, in this decade, American jobs lost

to China have vastly outnumbered those going to Mexico.

And Mexican companies are moving their own factories to countries

with an even lower wage scale – especially China, economist

Enrique Dussel Peters told the

Times

. Dr Dussel heads the Center

of China-Mexico Studies at the National Autonomous University of

Mexico, the largest university in Latin America.