More Free Trade Agreements? When NAFTA Failed

[Judi Lynn]

Ian Fletcher.Author, 'Free Trade Doesn't Work: What Should Replace It and Why'
Posted: March 20, 2011 08:00 PM
More Free Trade Agreements? When NAFTA Failed

With the Republicans and the Obama administration attempting to rush headlong into a new trade agreement with Korea, and possibly also with Panama and Colombia as well, it is incumbent on Americans to apply a bit of empiricism. How have our past trade agreements worked out? Above all, how's the grand-daddy of them all, NAFTA, doing?

Unfortunately, NAFTA is a veritable case study in failure.

This is all the more damning because this treaty was created, and is administered, by the very Washington elite that is loudest in proclaiming free trade's virtues. So there is no room for excuses about incompetent implementation, the standard alibi for free trade's failures in the developing world. So if free trade was going to work anywhere, it should have been here.

Instead, what happened? NAFTA was sold as a policy that would reduce America's trade deficit. But our trade balance actually worsened against both Canada and Mexico.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/more-free-trade-agreement_b_838196.html

[Arctic Dave]

1. Nafta was always about cheap labor exploitation and union busting.

It has been the model ever since.

[mod mom]

2. NAFTA didn't fail for the plutocracy. They became even more filthy rich.

:mad:

[NorthCarolina]

3. Turns out that NAFTA was apparently SO good, this administration decided to keep it afterall. nt

[Populist_Prole]

4. The OP and comments so far are spot on. Glad it's a subject of discussion.

I can't imagine just how they can push this "free trade is good" with a straight face anymore. It's 1 of 2 things: Has to be.

1) They think there are still those that haven't connected the dots to see the corrosive effect they have. Don't see how many more there can be anymore. Anybody who could be but hasn't already been affected can't help but to notice.

2) They're not talking to "us" but to the beneficiaries of it, or those who have a shadenfreudian disdain for the working class. But then, they aren't in the majority and they have their support anyway.

Who are they are they trying to convince? The last dozen or working class people that have been living under a rock the past 20 years?

Talk about an echo chamber!