sidents Salinas and Bush and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Mexican legislature ratified NAFTA in 1993 and the treaty went into effect on January 1, 1994, creating the largest free-trade zone in the world. Creating a North American free-trade zone and privatizing state-owned industry was part of a plan by the Salinas government to revive the Mexican economy. By 1993, the Mexican government had sold 80 percent of its industries to private investors for about $21 billion and had reduced inflation from 150 percent to 10 percent. In November 1993, President Clinton predicted that if the trade agreement passes, American companies will add another 200,000 jobs by 1995. NAFTA's promoters predicted that by the end of 1995 the U.S. would enjoy a $9 billion trade surplus with Mexico. The reality is that the post-NAFTA surge in imports from Mexico has resulted in an $8.6 billion trade deficit with Mexico for just the first six months of 1995. By adding the Mexican trade deficit numbers to the current deficit with Canada, the overall U.S. NAFTA trade deficit for the first six months of 1995 alone is $16.7 billion. Using the Department of Commerce trade data in the formula used by NAFTA proponents used to predict job gains, the real accumulated NAFTA trade deficit would translate into over three hundred thousand U.S. jobs lost. A number of companies that specifically promised to create new jobs actually laid workers off because of the agreement. Allied Signal, General Electric, Mattel, Proctor and Gamble, Scott Paper and Zenith all made specific promises to create jobs, and all have laid off workers because of NAFTA as certified by the U.S. Department of Labor's special NAFTA unemployment assistance program (NAFTA TAA). As of mid-August 1995, the U.S. Department of Labor has certified 38,148 workers as having lost their jobs to NAFTA. A total of 68,482 U.S. workers have filed to re...
