# 11 years into NAFTA . . . was it worth it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 9, 2005, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-years-into-nafta-was-it-worth-it/302986 "2005-05-09T00:11:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-years-into-nafta-was-it-worth-it/302986/1 "2005-05-09T00:11:53Z")
Ever since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA – [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAFTA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAFTA)) went into effect on January 1, 1994, Canada, the U.S. and Mexico have been a common free-trade zone. Unlike the European Union, NAFTA has no elected supranational policymaking bodies and no supranational legal structure; it’s just a free-trade agreement. The three members retain their own national currencies. Now the Bush Administration is pushing to establish a Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA – [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAFTA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAFTA)), as a step on the path to a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA – [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTAA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTAA)) which would include every country in the Western Hemisphere except for Cuba. (This would be modeled on NAFTA, not the EU – no elected FTAA Parliament or anything like that.) So I think it’s timely for us to debate the trade arrangement that started it all. 1. In what respects has NAFTA been good for the U.S.? 2. In what respects has it been bad for the U.S.? 3. In what respects has NAFTA been good for Canada.? 4. In what respects has it been bad for Canada? 5. In what respects has NAFTA been good for Mexico? 6. In what respects has it been bad for Mexico? 7. Has it been better for some social classes or interest groups and worse for others? 8. Would it be better if NAFTA had some directly elected policymaking body, like the European Parliament? 9. Have there been any mistakes of NAFTA that DR-CAFTA and FTAA might learn from? Any way the NAFTA model might be improved upon? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-years-into-nafta-was-it-worth-it/302986/2 "2005-05-09T00:49:27Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > 1. In what respects has NAFTA been good for Canada.? > > 2. In what respects has it been bad for Canada? First of all, the timing here is different for Canada; the free trade agreement between the two countries started in 1989, not 1994. NAFTA changed the arrangements somewhat, but for most practical purposes simply drew Mexico into an existing arrangement. As to what’s been good about it for Canada, that is very easy to figure out. In 1989, the annual Canadian trade surplus with the United States was about $7 billion a year. Today, it’s about $7 billion **every month.** Our trade surplus with the USA has averaged 15% growth since free trade was implemented. So the good thing has been that our businesses are making money hand over fist from the U.S. market, resulting in lots of jobs, more income, and more tax revenue. In a wonderful twist, we have managed to do this completely under the radar, while American pundits and politicians slam countries like China and India with whom their trade deficit is far smaller. As to what’s been bad about it… umm, I can’t say that there’s been much bad about it at all. As predicted, there was some restructuring at first - lost jobs, economic inefficiency - but that’s more than been made up for since in new jobs and new money. It’s not precisely clear if the addition of Mexico has had a substantial impact to Canada at all. ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-years-into-nafta-was-it-worth-it/302986/3 "2005-05-09T01:04:27Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > As to what’s been bad about it… umm, I can’t say that there’s been much bad about it at all. As predicted, there was some restructuring at first - lost jobs, economic inefficiency - but that’s more than been made up for since in new jobs and new money. I think the only guy still against NAFTA in Canada is David Orchard. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-years-into-nafta-was-it-worth-it/302986/4 "2005-05-09T01:40:16Z")
> [@Raygun99](#): > > I think the only guy still against NAFTA in Canada is David Orchard. Who? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-years-into-nafta-was-it-worth-it/302986/5 "2005-05-09T01:47:46Z")
Orchard is a Canadian hyper-nationalist who doesn’t like Americans, and has been campaigning against free trade for 20 years. When it happened and none of the doomsayers’ predictions proved correct, he just barreled ahead anyway. He was in and out of the Progressive Conservative Party, once ran for its leadership, and then sued to try to prevent it from merging with the Alliance party. He’s sort of the Canadian poster boy for lost causes; he continues to harp about NAFTA years after just about all intelligent Canadians have accepted that it worked, and continues to pretend he belongs to a party that doesn’t exist anymore. ---
**Author:** ![modernhamlet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/edb3f5/32.png) [@modernhamlet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/modernhamlet)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-years-into-nafta-was-it-worth-it/302986/6 "2005-05-09T03:50:15Z")
The plight of the Zapatistas aside, there is ample macroeconomic evidence that the benefits of NAFTA from a Mexican standpoint have been reaped extensively by a small few to the exclusion of the larger population. A little grist for the mill… > [@](#): > > …the quantitative and qualitative analyses confirm the occurrence of various positive effects of NAFTA that were originally foreseen. Specifically, we cannot reject the hypothesis that NAFTA has significantly contributed to expanding FDI, trade, employment and output. However, as a result of the 1995 macroeconomic crisis, we only found weak evidence of higher overall efficiency, labor productivity or real wages resulting from NAFTA. > > Source: [NAFTA’s Economic Effects on Mexico](http://www.econ.umn.edu/~tkehoe/classes/SanchezKarp.pdf), Manuel Sánchez/Nathaniel Karp I’m sure someone will drop in to post economic counter-evidence. But that’s the nature of economic analysis. If you look hard enough, you see what you want to see. As they say… Lies, damn lies, and statistics. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-years-into-nafta-was-it-worth-it/302986/7 "2005-05-09T21:04:13Z")
OK, we’ve heard from Canada (NAFTA good) and we’ve heard from Mexico (NAFTA good for the elite, not so good for the masses) – but has NAFTA been, on the balance, good or bad for the U.S.? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-years-into-nafta-was-it-worth-it/302986/8 "2005-05-09T21:46:20Z")
Hard to say. It certainly hasn’t been the “silver bullet” that would change Mexico into a 1st World nation, or… on the other hand- destroyed the US economy and peed on the Constitution. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2005, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-years-into-nafta-was-it-worth-it/302986/9 "2005-05-10T11:10:07Z")
Yes, Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound of American jobs going to Mexico” hasn’t exactly eventuated, has it? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2005, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-years-into-nafta-was-it-worth-it/302986/10 "2005-05-10T12:09:06Z")
> [@](#): > > Yes, Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound of American jobs going to Mexico” hasn’t exactly eventuated, has it? It depends on who you talk to. Public Citizen claims that three million jobs were lost during NAFTA and that “525,000 workers have been specifically classified as job-loss victims under justy one narrow government retraining program.” > **[nafta\_10\_jobs.pdf](https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/nafta_10_jobs.pdf)** > > 400.59 KB See [http://www.citizen.org/trade/nafta/](http://www.citizen.org/trade/nafta/) for more of theor criticism of NAFTA and [http://www.citizen.org/trade/](http://www.citizen.org/trade/) for their criticism of other “free trade” programs. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2005, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-years-into-nafta-was-it-worth-it/302986/11 "2005-05-10T19:18:16Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > Yes, Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound of American jobs going to Mexico” hasn’t exactly eventuated, has it? How about [Canada?](http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7446005/site/newsweek) > [@](#): > > Which part of North America makes the most cars? If you answered Michigan, you would have been right for 100 years. But you would not be right anymore. Last year the Canadian province of Ontario surpassed Michigan in car production. Of course, most of the cars made in Ontario are manufactured by America’s Big Three—General Motors, Ford and Daimler-Chrysler. These companies are shifting production out of the United States for one overwhelming reason: massive health-care costs. Granted, this is an article that talks about health care costs instead of NAFTA effects, but I wonder if such a move would have been fiscally feasible in a non-NAFTA economy. ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2005, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-years-into-nafta-was-it-worth-it/302986/12 "2005-05-10T19:21:43Z")
The autopact of 1965 basically setup free trade on car manufacturing, so the FTA and consequently the NAFTA may not have that much to do with it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2005, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-years-into-nafta-was-it-worth-it/302986/13 "2005-05-11T11:27:19Z")
So, what have we learned from all this? If we create a new DR-CAFTA, what will that mean for the Central American states and the Dominican Republic? And what will it mean for the existing NAFTA members?