NAFTA is back in the news this month: On August 16, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer met with his counterparts from Canada and Mexico, the other two NAFTA nations, to open talks on renegotiating the pact.
It was the left who diagnosed the ills of globalization. So why is the right eating our lunch? Today global capitalism is in a period of long-term stagnation following the global financial crisis. The newer protests represent a far broader disenchantment with capitalism than the protests of the 2000s. The building blocks of an alternative economic model are there - sustainable development, de-growth, and de-globalization.
But now, in an act of political judo, Trump is trying to use the same anti-establishment, pro-American rhetoric from his campaign to craft a neoliberal NAFTA renegotiation that will include everything demanded in the recently scuttled TPP—and more. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, as well as others in Trump’s administration, have been surprisingly straightforward about these intentions.
UE's General Executive Board denounced Trump's racist and jingoistic proposals for a renegotion of NAFTA and instead called for a new set of trade policies that prioritize workers common interests and relies on international solidarity as its cornerstone. Any renegotiation of NAFTA must be oriented around the improvement of workers’ lives and protection of the environment focused on those regions of the continent where conditions are the most desperate.
“Mostly what I see here is the same corporate wish list and a set of international rules that work quite well for global corporations,” said Celeste Drake, the AFL-CIO’s trade policy specialist.
Mexico's 1917 Constitution asserted national control over all resources and launched a program of land redistribution. It established the most progressive labor legislation in the world at that time, guaranteeing a minimum wage, the right to strike and collective bargaining, an eight-hour day, an end to child labor, equal pay regardless of sex, and maternity leave. The betrayal of the constitution began early and turned into a rout in the 1980s.by neoliberals.
These workers know from bitter experience that CEOs don’t have their best interests in mind. They know the problem with the TPP and NAFTA is that they were drafted by CEOs for the benefit of CEOs and 1 percenter shareholders. Workers never got an equal seat at the negotiating tables.They know that Donald Trump listened to 24 CEOs on Thursday but not one manufacturing worker.
About that wall: if the Mexican economy had just continued to grow post-1980, as it did for the two decades prior, Mexicans would have an average income at European levels today. Extremely few Mexicans would take big risks to live or work in the US.
Donald Trump's draconian immigration enforcement efforts face a basic challenge: the United States operates within an economic system that profits off immigrant labor. Immigrant labor is more vital to many industries than it's ever been before. Today, about 57% of the country's entire agricultural workforce is undocumented. But the list of other industries dependent on immigrant labor is long.
Time and again workers mention the same issue as to why they abandoned the Democrats: NAFTA. Feltner says, “The NAFTA bill is still fresh in people’s minds. The international was all, ‘Vote Democrat, Democrat, Democrat.’ Then they make an announcement about jobs going away and it’s because of NAFTA. The workers connect that to the Democrats, and Hillary was saddled with that.”
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