NAFTA at 20: The New Spin

Click here to access article by Manuel Perez-Rocha and Javier Rojo from Foreign Policy in Focus. 

Despite the devastating and ongoing drug war, the story now goes that Mexico is poised to become a “middle-class” society. As establishment apostle Thomas Friedman put it in the New York Times, Mexico is now one of “the more dominant economic powers in the 21st century.”

Although NAFTA may have been good for Wall Street, the authors explore the terrible effects on ordinary people in Mexico.

As the 20th anniversary of NAFTA approaches, however, the verdict is indisputable: NAFTA failed to spur meaningful and inclusive economic growth in Mexico, pull Mexicans out of unemployment and underemployment, or reduce poverty. By all accounts, it has done just the opposite.