John Mininger posted on 1/17/2010 7:17:00 AM
I’m not a huge fan of NAFTA either, but I come at it from a completely different perspective.
Bi-lateral trade agreements tend to reflect and favor whichever interest group had the most political influence du jour when they were enacted, whether the interest group was the corn growers, the sugar growers, the citrus growers, Exxon-Mobil, the Sierra Club, or Oxfam.
Interestingly there’s a new study out of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that says NAFTA was much more beneficial for the U.S. then it was for Mexico. One of the reasons they sight is apparently when cheap U.S. corn started coming into Mexico it put a lot of Mexican corn farmers out of work. For me, it begs the question: Was the U.S. corn cheaper because of our better growing conditions, our more efficient agribusiness practices, or because the growing of corn in the U.S. is so heavily subsidized by the U.S. government? i.e. Were the U.S. taxpayers helping to pay for the corn being shipped to Mexico?
As I said, I’m not a fan of NAFTA either. I think we should unilaterally get rid of all trade barriers. I believe it’s a human right to be able to trade with anyone in the world that I choose, regardless of political boundaries.

Frank Tiboni posted on 1/15/2010 12:23:00 PM
I'm no genius but it seems the economy took a turn for the worse when the gas prices went out of control, people horded their money and no one was spending because of fear of higher heating/gas bills. And stop NAFDA, company's are moving out of this country at an alarming rate, let them move but tax their product so high that no one would be able to afford them, that would get them back here. Alls nafda did was hurt out country.....just my opinion.

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