LATEST ECONOMICAL AFFAIRS ZONE

  SOME NAFTA FUN

• Before NAFTA, Mexico imported 2% of its corn. Now it imports 50%.
• We're exporting extra meat and poultry to Mexico as well.
• To prevent this whole mess Mexico had federally owned corn stores that would buy excess corn from farmers when the price dropped too low. This was ruled an infringement of NAFTA.
• The amount of food one can buy with a day's wages has been halved.
• NAFTA's planners actually planned for people to leave the countryside and work in factories, but that emigration never stopped. 300 people/day leave the countryside.
• Privatization of Mexican government services, which actually preceded NAFTA, was sped up. In other words, Mexican train manufacturers were replaced with big American companies who could do it cheaper.
• NAFTA was hoped to create investment in Mexican industry. In Guadalajara, multi nations such as HP, IBM, and Intel built offices. The area was called "Silicon Valley South" in 1998. But by 2003 all these offices were relocated to China and 20,000 jobs were lost. The remaining manufacturers were on a contract basis.
• NAFTA ended the provision that forced American automakers to buy some percentage of auto parts from Mexico, immediately collapsing a large industry. So much for boosting the economy!
• Largest retailer in Mexico: Wal-Mart.
• One of Mexicans' biggest sources of income today: $23 billion of paychecks from illegal immigrants in the US.
• Without illegal immigration, families living under NAFTA cannot buy clean food, live in their own house, or send children to school.
• Illegal immigrants have no OSHA rights, or human rights such as the minimum wage, or the right to organize. In other words, unlike American citizens, they can be treated like expendable animals and placed in dangerous situations with no protection.