re: #33 KGxvi

I’m with my favourite author on NAFTA.

NAFTA Not a free trade agreement.

Signed by Canada, Mexico and the United States in 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement replaced the 1988 Free Trade Agreement (FTA), between Canada and the United States. It wasn’t a free trade agreement either. Long before either treaty was signed all three countries were approaching virtual free trade.

Why then the insistence on the term? This is a classic example of the Dictatorship of Vocabulary. “Free” carries positive baggage. Who can be against freedom? “Free trade” promises prosperity. Only romantic dreamers can be against it.

NAFTA, like FTA, is an economic integration agreement. It respects the corporatist model in which an unregulated market is given primacy over all other aspects of society by the simple act of excluding those other aspects from the treaty. It places the cheap, unsecured labour of Mexico and the southern United States in opposition to the middle class labour of of Canada and much of the northern United States. The effect on the cheap labour can be seen in Mexico’s Maquiladora Zone. The effect on the more expensive can be seen in endemic high unemployment rates.

NAFTA creates the mechanism for a social fait accompli without the social issues being discussed. It frees the transnational corporation and its managers from geographical realities and obligations.

This approach is the exact opposite of that used in the European Community, which is attempting to balance political and social realities with market forces.

From The Doubter’s Companion.

The TPP is just another, larger example of NAFTA. It will have just as many deleterious effects on the nations involved.