e supposed to trickle down from producers to packing plants to retailers and ultimately to consumers. In several prominent instances under NAFTA, consumer prices have actually risen. The 62% decline in hot dog prices in the U.S. has failed to reach the nation's consumers, who pay more for a pound of pork now than they did five years ago, even after adjusting for inflation. The price of tomatoes have risen 16% in real terms since NAFTA went into effect in 1993. In Canada, producers receive $60 per pig. It costs $3,200 for that same pig in the supermarket. Before the 1998 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA, Canadian wheat imports to the U.S.-a major wheat producer and exporter-were virtually zero. Five years after NAFTA, the U.S. is Canada's number two export market for wheat. U.S. imports of Canadian spring wheat increased 2,000% to 1.45 million tons, from 1990 to 1997. The Canadian wheat flood has taken its toll on U.S. wheat farmers, who are prevented by NAFTA from imposing new quotas, imposed on Canadian wheat in 1994, have been lifted.The environment too continues to suffer through increased industrialized activity. NAFTA has exacerbated preexisting environmental and public health problems caused by a high concentration of export manufacturing plants in the free trade zone along the U.S.-Mexico border. The Clinton Administration echoed these sentiments, and went so far as to claim without NAFTA, the growth of the maquiladora sector would cause an environmentally devastating spiral of industrial and population growth and resulting air and water pollution.Yet rather than reversing, this trend has accelerated. During NAFTA's first five years the maquiladora zone along the U.S.-Mexico border has undergone explosive growth, compounding preexisting environmental and health problems; the promised clean-up and new environmental infrastructure never materialized. In three cases, U.S.-based companies are suing Mexico for the right to o...
