NAFTA 20 Years Later

Should have published this earlier, but better late than never. Especially since this is an important topic that affects so many in North America.

Back when NAFTA was being debated, around the 1992 Presidential election and shortly afterwards, I was not entirely sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

Now that we have had time to see the results, we can measure what it has done with more accuracy.

In the twenty years since NAFTA was signed into law, the wages in all three countries - Canada, the United States, and Mexico - have gone down.

NAFTA was favored by many Republicans and Democrats, including President Bill Clinton, who eventually signed it into law. It was touted as a "free trade agreement", and if you listened to proponents of the agreement, it did not sound that bad.

The reality is that it gave corporations special privileges and protections, at the expense of the rest of us. That is why the quality of life has decreased with increased speed.

That is why NAFTA has failed the people. It goes along entirely with the whole corporate supremacy mentality, putting profits over people, that has been the dominant theme now for decades, and continues to be so today. It should have been clear enough by 2008's financial crisis that all of this was bad news, yet we have resumed pretty much doing the same thing as before. It's not a question of if we will have another "wealth buiolt on a bubble" burst, but when.

And during this whole time, people continue to give the green light to NAFTA. You hardly hear about it, and no one calls it into question.

But the results really do speak for themselves, and they tell a definitive story that suggests one thing: NAFTA was not good for the people. It was good for corporations, but the quality of life, and real salaries and benefits, have been adversely affected, even while many corporate entities continue to record record profits.

Here is one report from billmoyers.com that illustrates the detrimental impact that NAFTA has had on the United States generally.


"Report: NAFTA Turns 20"  January 2, 2014  by Dave Johnson of billmoyers.com

http://billmoyers.com/2014/01/02/that-sucking-sound-nafta-turns-20/