EoW July 2008

And he even roped Messrs Calderón and Harper into sharply criticising a decision by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to scuttle a vote on a free trade agreement with Colombia. Senator John McCain, the presumptive presidential nominee of Mr Bush’s own Republican party, is a supporter of NAFTA and in general a proponent of free trade. Under NAFTA, the world’s largest trade bloc, trade among America, Canada and Mexico will have risen to an estimated $1 trillion by the end of this year, from roughly $290 billion in 1994. But it has aroused various discontents in all three signatory countries, especially in the US where a downturn in the economy is exacerbating fears about job security. Opponents of expanded international trade say it helps businesses but threatens American jobs and keeps wages from growing. Mr Bush claims that Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama are employing anti-trade arguments to attract the votes of working-class Americans. Somewhat taken aback to find herself under fire from three ❈ ❈ heads of state, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi suggested that her chamber might yet hold a vote on a trade agreement with Colombia – if the Bush administration would consider an expansion of unemployment benefits, and an increase in training programmes to assist those US workers who lose their jobs as companies move operations overseas. “The American people want solutions on the economy and less partisan rhetoric from the president,” Ms Pelosi said in a statement. “Democrats have repeatedly told the president we are willing to work with him in good faith to create jobs and restore our economic strength.” Mr Bush was not soothed. “She’s effectively killed [the deal with Colombia],” he fumed, and reiterated his warning that its failure would affect regional security by weakening the Colombian president, Álvaro Uribe, and strengthening Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez. Mr Chávez has been openly contemptuous of the US, its president, and its policies in Latin America. As those who would be president focus on Mexico, jobs lost to China go unremarked Writing in the New York Times for 22 nd April, Elizabeth Malkin points out that the Democratic candidates are replaying the arguments made against the North American Free Trade Agreement in the early 1990s, when opponents like the Texas data-processing tycoon Ross Perot argued that it would create a “giant sucking sound” of jobs moving to Mexico. But much has changed since then. “For a start,” said Ms Malkin, “Perot Systems, which he helped found, has set up a Mexican subsidiary.” In the first years under NAFTA, jobs did leave the United States for Mexico. But Ms Malkin noted that, in this decade, American jobs lost to China have vastly outnumbered those going to Mexico. And Mexican companies are moving their own factories to countries with an even lower wage scale – especially China, economist Enrique Dussel Peters told the Times . Dr Dussel heads the Center of China-Mexico Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the largest university in Latin America.

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EuroWire – July 2008