North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA's proponents promised benefits for the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Benefits such as new U.S. jobs, higher wages in Mexico, a growing U.S. trade surplus with Mexico, environmental clean-up and improved health along the borderall have failed to take form.It is commonly believed that free trade between nations is a mutually beneficial arrangement for all parties involved; indeed, this is held to be an absolute truth. Though free trade is undoubtedly the most effective form of commerce between countries from a purely economic standpoint, increasingly we find that our so-called "free trade agreements" are horribly unbalanced. Indicative of these fiascoes is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA is a lopsided and detrimental deal, hastily hammered out by an inexperienced group of American negotiators under constant pressure from the Bush Administration. I will outline several primary concerns about NAFTA, looking at the effects and circumstances surrounding the development of this deal.In June 1990, president Salinas of Mexico met with president George Bush to discuss a proposal to expand Mexico's maquiladoras program (named for the Maquiladoras Act of 1972: a law designed to exempt international companies from certain environmental and labor laws) by establishing a free trade agreement between Mexico and America, and possibly Canada; anxious to find something to make him look favorable in the upcoming election, Bush jumped at the idea, and immediately began lobbying Congress for "fast-track" authority to bypass Congressional involvement in the subsequent trade negotiations. That hurdle overcome, President Bush hastily assembled a group of ad-hoc trade negotiators and threw them pell-mell at the professional Canadian negotiators and the high-priced Washington insiders and ex-government employees that had been hired by Mexico. On August 12, 1992, President Bush announced completion of ...
