Free Trade Doesn't Work: Is it time to Repeal NAFTA

NAFTA is not free trade. Refer to my posts below. Peace

THAT is along the right track. +^d

+^d !

+^d Yep.

Fair trade is trade open to all, not a few hand selected corporate companies that get international loopholes. That is what NAFTA is, that is what we have lived under for a long time....corporatism. Protectionist efforts are what help build corporatism. Free trade allows more competition and helps the consumer chhttp://i2.crtcdn.net/images/spacer.gifoice.

Fair trade would be as useful to creating and sustaining jobs as free trade. Developing nations need to protect their manufacturing base and Developed countries need to trade with themselves. We need to remove the situation where a corporation can hire a worker for 50 cents a day by making it very costly to get that product back into competitive markets. free or fair trade with Mexico is a bad idea. Free or fair trade with any country who feels it can treat it's working class as surfs and slaves is not a good idea.

I think there is some validity to the claim that not having free trade with a developing country will cause an influx of illegal immigrants. I honestly had not thought about it before now. I guess with all that money from your newly revived manufacturing base you might be able to afford some border patrol.

Why are you so xenophobic? What's up with your racism...you got some serious problems...

Immigration is not bad, unless you're racist......

NAFTA didn't allow more illegal immigration....you look foolish stating such mistruths.

NAFTA is a 1300 page document that allows for international corporatism loopholes while still keeping the protectionist tariff costs on small business. It is Corporatism at its worse......sold to the followers as free trade that is NOT free trade.

Free trade doesn't need a law, we just need to be left alone in order to have free trade.

Anytime someone tells you freedom comes packaged up in a 1300 page document....see through it....it is probably just another corporatist measure....

NAFTA has NOTHING to do with REAL free trade.....just like the republicans have NOTHING to do with REAL Freedom.....

Illegal immigration exploded at the same time as our free trade policies were pushed on developing countries. Farmers on small plots of land couldn't keep up with our industrialized agricultre, and farmers make up over half the population of most developing countries. Forcing them to open there markets to our goods basically pushed half of the population in those developing countries out of work. They responded like anyone else would respond. By doing everything they could to survive including illegally immigrating, which absolutely as you suggest pushes down wages. But it is not helpful to hold angry views towards them. They are making the best of a situation we imposed on them.

Developing countries should have free trade among similar developing countries. Developed with developed countries. The US had the highest tariffs in the world while it was developing on industry b/c it new that it's infant industries couldn't compete with established industries in Europe. Because they were protected US industrialized and developed. Bc of free trade we are forcing countries to specialize in labor intensive low wage industries rather than nurture and develop manufacturing.

It isn't about us versus them. It's about allowing competition in innovation rather than wage and environmental standards. It's about not creating an international system that causes a race to the bottom in terms of who can pay the most criminal wages, who can disregard the environment, etc. Lower prices from these companies may temporarily help the consumer but the long term effects are the decline in manufacturing, and reduced wages in jobs, and an overall reduction in purchasing power (and subsequent unemployment) as countries are forced to keep their exchange rates artificially low in keeping exports competitive. This leads to consumer spending eventually being fuelled by debt. This is the story of the last 30 years, and the story sucks.

You are ignoring Mexico's economic situation in this analysis.

You make it sound as if Mexico hadn't gone through fiat currency devaluation....you act as if Mexico has always been the same.

The reason Mexicans are coming to America is actually about the LEAVING poverty. They are trying to escape government created devastation in Mexico....

They wen't through central banking woes years before us...that is the difference.

Illegal immigrants wouldn't come here if they knew business was going elsewhere....your theory does not hold up.

The reason more "illegal" (I don't believe they are illegal) immmigration has occurred has been because of deteriorating conditions in Mexico....not NAFTA.....

NAFTA helps build loopholes for international corporations while keeping the protectionist barriers on small business.....

Once again, we haven't had free trade is a long time, NAFTA is not about free trade....

They just sell it to you as free trade but it's really managed trade.... free trade does not require a document.

Umm just what job did you lose to an illegal? where you a dish washer,lawn care guy,Umm meat cutter,cement finsher, or do you just like to complain?

That is a out standing comment, sounds like you know whats happening in the real world. You must be one of the lucky ones that use your brain for something besides giveing yourself a head ache.

I didn't mean to insult anyone my statement was an opinion not any fact that's why I started out It seems to me. I remember when NAFTA was started I thought we was sharing our production with the rest of the world.

In my area, I've seen many things, but nothing like the illegal immigrant explosion of 2001; 20 to a house, tent cities in every plot of woods, shopping carts all lined up as if they where parked. Nobody could compete with the companies that employed them. All 20 would work for one man's pay. It was totaly against the law and our government just turn a blind eye. When George left office they also left, at least in my area, Those houses are empy, tent cities were left in ruin, shopping carts all tossed about...the damage was done.

I am no Stephen Hawkins that's for sure. I have been a Union Ironworker from Baltimore for 23 years and have worked on many large jobs (with 1,000 plus men and women) and have seen all trades fall victim to the illigal immigration problem. I'm not refering to legal immigrants they also struggle for equal pay and benifits.

+^d

We can have no "50-50" allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all. - Theodore Roosevelt

that will never happen to many big wigs getting rich off it.

managed trade for who's benefit?

most of the trade agreements we have going are one way streets of capital and goods away from less leveraged nations and people.

free trade always *sounds* like a good idea, until we realize that there is a LONG history of colonization and oppression that needs to be corrected before any form of *free trade* makes sense.

the playing field is far from level and not putting restrictions of negotiations on the table to protect workers and weaker economies puts them ever more under the control of the elites of this world.

I am all for freedom, but free trade seems to be only beneficial to those already in power. capitalism only requires for companies to make profit for shareholders, where are the stakeholders, natural resources and wage slaves located in that system? oppression has many forms, even under the guise of free trade.

Fact of the matter is that every country has a working class equally skilled as your own. With free trade if a corporation wants to hire Chinese laborers for 50 cents a day to make clothing of the same quality they will hire that worker verse an American worker who would require 10+ dollars an hour.

Corporations care only about the bottom line. They are naturally greedy and uncaring about social inequality. We have to force corporations to care about people by giving them no incentive to hire that 50 cent a day worker.

Free trade between similar standard of living countries does work and would help keep those important manufacturing jobs at home.

deals like NAFTA stop companies from competing and start making workforces compete in a race to the bottom for wages.

This is true but if the corporations were forced to manufacture with a work force with rights and higher standard of living (for example free trade between Canada and The US) there would be no lower wages given that each country has a comparable standard of living and employee protections.

It is when you include countries like Mexico and China where workers have far less protections and the standard of living and wages are drastically lower that corporations have the option to hire lower wage employees.

you tell me to look past the rhetoric and then post a video of ron paul spouting his version? i stand with him on many issues including the fact that NAFTA is wrong, that corporations are in control of trade agreements and have a revolving door with regulators.

where i disagree is that "true" free trade is the solution. i think that it masquerades behind a veil of being the force to right the inequities and take power away from Washington, but would in fact make it EASIER for corporations and bankers to exploit the workers and resources in other nations.

i am not in favor of protecting corporations, but rather in favor of having trade restrictions placed and designed in order to protect our economy and that of other nations. we should be facilitating trade but not at the expense of others. in a corporate system where companies are LEGALLY required to make profit, they will continue to make unethical choices in the search for the bottom line. riding the world of regulation will only make this worse.

get rid of corporations in politics, outlaw corporate personhood and start making real legislation that gives back democracy to the people of this nation and the world.

we need to rethink what we are doing, not open the "free trade" floodgates to fix the problem of free trade in general.

Seriously.

In a world where we share rather than steal... we can all be afforded an amazingly lavish lifestyle that is sustainable and non-toxic. Greed just creates false scarcity and class division... and the blindness continues.

@Kenny I really wish I could buy stuff made in America :/

I tried boycotting chinese products a year ago (just to see if I could). Unless I planned to make everything myself it was basically impossible. Which is really a shame.

I have nothing against other countries but I do like to support my own. Since the people are close enough that I can see them it hurts a little more to watch them work themselves to homelessness.

Demand the products made in the USA, I know of a great website that has nothing but American products I'll try and post it later to day when I find it again. Got to go to work see ya later.

think about other people before you post again.

economic libertarians want freedom for themselves at the cost of workers everywhere.

its not all about those dolla bills, consumers and profit margins. we are all people, and inequality is the state of the world right now. we can't pursue freedom and pretend that oppression will rectify itself in the marketplace....

I agree that we need to take an evolutionary approach to the issue and distinguish the benefits of good trade from free trade. I also think there is gains from trade among nations at comparative stages in there development. Countries with similar wages, environmental regulations, can compete in innovating. When developed countries trade with developing countries rather than innovating we get competition in terms of who will deregulate their industry the fastest in terms of paying lower wages and disregarding environmental and safety standards.

Similarly when developing countries are forced into free trade, they basically de-industrialize as was the case in the former soviet union and in latin america during the free trade push beginning in the eighties. Asian countries actually continued to develop industry because they were big enough to say no to liberalization, and have continued to protect manufacturing behind tariffs until it's ready to be competitive and at that point slowly opening it up to trade, similarly to how the US protected it's infant industry behind tariffs when it was catching up to Europe. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/chang230109.html or see Erik Reinert "how rich countries got rich and why poor countries stay poor" or Chang "Bad Samaritans"

Because Asian countries could depend on our consumption they could hold there wages artificially low, because we would consume there surplus. This has led to reduced wages and a decline in manufacturing here as well as high levels of consumer debt, but artificially high growth there. However, they have a large enough internal market, and developing countries have large enough shared markets that they can compete with eachother, rather than forcing down our wage rates. Middle income countries can also trade amonst themselves. They can develop their own wage and environmental standards according to what is realistic given there productivity level. Also, if stragglers are freely allowed to copy our technologies b/c we don't have to compete with them (b/c they are part of a different market) then what they lose in our consuming power will be made up in the speed in which they can take up our technologies.

Environmental standards are a huge reason america lost manufacturing jobs. Not having to clean-up after yourself saves tons of money.

Environmental issues would definitely be something I would include in the negotiations of the free trade agreement. I think Environmental issues are a huge part of our standard of living. So if a country was a mass polluter they would not be allowed to trade in the free trade markets.

It's likely my expertise is at least as deficient as yours if not more so, but I suspect now may already be too late. At this point repealing NAFTA could crush the world economy. Any action would have to be extremely gradual.

I agree that we need to take an evolutionary approach to the issue. I also think there is gains from trade among nations at comparative stages in there development. Countries with similar wages, environmental regulations, can compete in innovating. When developed countries trade with developing countries rather than innovating we get competition in terms of who will deregulate their industry the fastest in terms of paying lower wages and disregarding environmental and safety standards.

Similarly when developing countries are forced into free trade, they basically de-industrialize as was the case in the former soviet union and in latin america during the free trade push beginning in the eighties. Asian countries actually continued to develop industry because they were big enough to say no to liberalization, and have continued to protect manufacturing behind tariffs until it's ready to be competitive and at that point slowly opening it up to trade. Because they could depend on our consumption they could hold there wages artificially low, because we would consume there surplus. This has led to reduced wages and a decline in manufacturing here, but artificially high growth there. However, they have a large enough internal market, and developing countries have large enough shared markets that they can compete with eachother, rather than forcing down our wage rates. Middle income countries can also trade amonst themselves. They can develop their own wage and environmental standards according to what is realistic given there productivity level. Also, if stragglers are freely allowed to copy our technologies b/c we don't have to compete with them (b/c they are part of a different market) then what they lose in our consuming power will be made up in the speed in which they can take up our technologies.

phew, thanks for your work. thats a lot of history.

cheers