As Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama slug out the Ohio round of
their Democratic primary fight, the issue of NAFTA has returned to the
center of debate, revealing deep, unresolved tension in the Democratic
Party 15 years after the passage of the landmark trade agreement.
It's not hard to see why knocking NAFTA makes for good politics in Ohio.
The state has lost more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000.
Anger spurred by these losses played a major role in Ohio voters' choice
of Democrat Sherrod Brown - an outspoken opponent of NAFTA - as their
U.S.
senator in 2006. And NAFTA's political significance was demonstrated
again in exit polls from the Feb. 19 Wisconsin primary, which found 70
percent of Democratic voters hold the treaty responsible for job losses
in the Midwest.
But while the candidates have taken political shots at each other over
trade, neither one has been specific about how he or she would change
the agreement. Indeed, Hillary Clinton's vague call for more labor and
environmental protections in NAFTA echoes the toothless side agreements
that her husband used as a fig leaf for supporting a trade agreement
with major corporate backing in 1993. Obama hasn't gone much further.
So would either a President Obama or Clinton live up to their campaign
promises to Ohio voters and change NAFTA? Surprisingly, the answer may
be yes.
NAFTA's relevance to this year's election - and the likelihood that a
Democratic president will have to scrap or change it - is due as much to
its role in accelerating undocumented migration from Mexico as to the
visceral reaction swing voters in Midwestern states such as Ohio have to
job losses it causes here at home.
During the NAFTA debate in 1993, advocates assured the U.S. and Mexican
people that it would greatly alleviate unauthorized immigration by
increasing employment opportunities in Mexico and closing the gap
between U.S. and Mexican wages. But the promise of prosperity has been a
mirage for millions of Mexicans: the value of the Mexican minimum wage
dropped 23 percent in NAFTA's first decade; 19 million more Mexicans are
living in poverty than 20 years ago, and today, one quarter of Mexico's
population cannot afford basic foods.
Increased income disparity and poverty in the post-NAFTA years
correlated with a sharp rise in migration to the United States,
especially from the Mexican countryside. Even the most conservative
estimates make it clear that during the first decade of NAFTA the annual
number of undocumented immigrants arriving in the United States from
Mexico nearly doubled.
While the bulk of the American immigration reform debate in the past
year has focused on dueling proposals for higher border fences or
restrictive guest-worker programs, some advocates have begun to state
the obvious: If you don't address the root causes of economic
insecurity, no fence will keep Mexicans from crossing the border in
urgent search of opportunities that have disappeared at home. Indeed,
both Obama and Clinton have started to make this link in their public
appearances.
While free-trade advocates will try to portray the agreement as
sacrosanct, a Democratic Congress and president could do much to fix
NAFTA. The first step lies in rebuilding America's fraying relationship
with Mexico's people.
A president offering to fix the worst aspects of the agreement would be
hailed as a friend.
Short of canceling the agreement outright, the United States, Mexico and
Canada could agree to a series of steps to shield the most vulnerable
farmers and workers. First among these would be to restore the power of
national governments to shape agricultural policies with a special eye
to stabilizing small and subsistence-level farmers, who are the most
easily displaced. Additionally, we should assist communities that have
been the hardest hit by targeting government, private and
nongovernmental investments to grass-roots initiatives that stabilize
communities and, in Mexico, reduce the pressure to migrate.
To develop the tools needed for an intelligent rethinking of NAFTA,
Congress should immediately mandate a bias-free and comprehensive study
of NAFTA's impacts that includes employment and income distribution in
all three NAFTA countries, as well as on immigration. Such a study -
guided by reality, not blind faith in free-trade ideology - can serve
any incoming administration as a road map for change. To date, such a
study has never been carried out.
This election year, the confluence of economic insecurity at home and
abroad with growing immigration offers a unique opportunity to fix
NAFTA. If a President Obama or Clinton spends the political capital
necessary to link the issues of NAFTA and immigration, the payoff
politically and in terms of real change for real people on both sides of
the border could be enormous.
Lewis is Mexico human rights director for Global Exchange, a San
Francisco-based global human rights organization.San Diego Union Tribune
