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<H1>New Public Citizen Report Details NAFTA's Broken Promises</H1></DIV>
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<P>WASHINGTON, D.C. Dec. 28, 2013 – On the eve of the North American Free
Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) 20th anniversary (Jan. 1), a new Public Citizen
report shows that not only did promises made by proponents not
materialize, but many results are exactly the opposite. Such outcomes
include a staggering $181 billion U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners
Mexico and Canada, one million net U.S. jobs lost because of NAFTA, a
doubling of immigration from Mexico, larger agricultural trade deficits
with Mexico and Canada, and more than $360 million paid to corporations
after “investor-state” tribunal attacks on, and rollbacks of, domestic
public interest policies.</P>
<P>The study tracks the promises made by U.S. corporations like Chrysler
and Caterpillar to create specific numbers of American jobs if NAFTA was
approved, and reveals government data showing that instead, they fired
U.S. workers and moved operations to Mexico. The data also show how
post-NAFTA trade and investment trends have contributed to middle-class
pay cuts, which in turn contributed to growing income inequality; how
since NAFTA, U.S. trade deficit growth with Mexico and Canada has been 45
percent higher than with countries not party to a U.S. Free Trade
Agreement, and how U.S. manufacturing and services exports to Canada and
Mexico have grown at less than half the pre-NAFTA rate.</P>
<P>“NAFTA’s actual outcomes prove how damaging this type of agreement is
for most people, that it should be renegotiated and why we cannot have any
more such deals that include job-offshoring incentives, requirements we
import food that doesn’t meet our safety standards or new rights for firms
to get taxpayer compensation before foreign tribunals over laws they don’t
like,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
“Given NAFTA’s record of damage, it is equal parts disgusting and
infuriating that now President Barack Obama has joined the corporate
Pinocchios who lied about NAFTA in recycling similar claims to try to sell
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is NAFTA-on-steroids.”</P>
<P>As Americans have lived with NAFTA’s effects since its Jan. 1, 1994,
start, public opinion has shifted dramatically, from a narrow divide
during the 1993 NAFTA debate to overwhelming opposition today. A 2012
Angus Reid Public Opinion poll found that 53 percent of Americans believe
the U.S. should “do whatever is necessary” to “renegotiate” or “leave”
NAFTA, while only 15 percent believe the U.S. should “continue to be a
member of NAFTA.” That opposition cuts across party lines, class divisions
and education levels, perhaps explaining growing controversy over the
proposed deepening and expansion of the NAFTA model through the TPP.</P>
<P>Among the study’s findings:</P>
<P>Rather than creating in any year the 170,00 jobs per year promised by
former President Bill Clinton on the basis of Peterson Institute for
International Economics projections, job loss from NAFTA began
rapidly:</P>
<P>- American manufacturing jobs were lost as U.S. firms used NAFTA’s new
foreign investor privileges to relocate production to Mexico to take
advantage of that country’s lower wages and weaker environmental
standards, and as a new flood of NAFTA imports swamped gains in exports,
creating a massive new trade deficit that equated to an estimated net loss
of one million U.S. jobs by 2004. A small pre-NAFTA U.S. trade surplus of
$2.5 billion with Mexico turned into a huge new deficit, and a pre-NAFTA
$29.1 billion deficit with Canada exploded. The NAFTA-spurred job loss has
not abated during NAFTA’s second decade, as the burgeoning post-NAFTA U.S.
trade deficit with Canada and Mexico has not declined.</P>
<P>- More than 845,000 U.S. workers in the manufacturing sector have been
certified for Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) since NAFTA because they
lost their jobs due to imports from Canada and Mexico or the relocation of
factories to those countries. The TAA program is quite narrow, covering
only a subset of jobs lost at manufacturing facilities, and is difficult
to qualify for. Thus, the NAFTA TAA numbers significantly undercount NAFTA
job loss.</P>
<P>NAFTA contributed to downward pressure on U.S. wages and growing income
inequality. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, two out of
every three displaced industrial workers who were rehired in 2012
experienced wage reductions, most of more than 20 percent. As increasing
numbers of workers displaced from manufacturing jobs joined the glut of
workers competing for non-offshorable, low-skill jobs in sectors such as
hospitality and food service, real wages have also fallen in these sectors
since NAFTA. The resulting downward pressure on wages has fueled recent
growth in income inequality.</P>
<P>Scores of NAFTA countries’ environmental and health laws have been
challenged in foreign tribunals through the controversial investor-state
dispute resolution system. More than $360 million in compensation to
investors has been extracted from NAFTA governments via “investor-state”
tribunal challenges against toxics bans, land-use rules, water and
forestry policies and more. More than $12.4 billion is currently pending
in such claims, including challenges of medicine patent policies, a
fracking moratorium and a renewable energy program.</P>
<P>The average annual U.S. agricultural trade deficit with Mexico and
Canada under NAFTA stands at $800 million, more than twice the pre-NAFTA
level. U.S. beef imports from Mexico and Canada, for example, have risen
130 percent. This stands in stark contrast to the promises made to U.S.
farmers and ranchers that NAFTA would allow them to export their way to
newfound wealth and farm income stability. Despite a 188 percent rise in
food imports from Canada and Mexico under NAFTA, the average nominal price
of food in the United States jumped 65 percent since NAFTA went into
effect.</P>
<P>The reductions in consumer goods prices that have materialized have not
been sufficient to offset the losses to wages under NAFTA; U.S. workers
without college degrees (63 percent of the workforce) likely have lost a
net amount equal to 12.2 percent of their wages even after accounting for
gains from cheaper goods. This net loss means a loss of more than $3,300
per year for a worker earning the median annual wage of $27,500.</P>
<P>The export of subsidized U.S. corn did increase under NAFTA, destroying
the livelihoods of more than one million Mexican campesino farmers and
about 1.4 million additional Mexican workers whose livelihoods depended on
agriculture.</P>
<P>- The desperate migration of those displaced from Mexico’s rural
economy pushed down wages in Mexico’s border maquiladora factory zone and
contributed to a doubling of Mexican immigration to the U.S. following
NAFTA’s implementation.</P>
<P>- Though the price paid to Mexican farmers for corn plummeted after
NAFTA, the deregulated retail price of tortillas – Mexico’s staple food –
shot up 279 percent in the pact’s first 10 years.</P>
<P>Facing displacement, rising prices and stagnant wages, more than half
the Mexican population, and more than 60 percent of the rural population,
still falls below the poverty line, despite the promises that NAFTA would
bring broad prosperity to Mexicans.</P>
<P>- Real wages in Mexico have fallen significantly below pre-NAFTA levels
as price increases for basic consumer goods have exceeded wage increases.
A minimum wage earner in Mexico today can buy 38 percent fewer consumer
goods than on the day that NAFTA took effect. Despite promises that NAFTA
would benefit Mexican consumers by granting access to cheaper imported
products, the cost of basic consumer goods in Mexico has risen to seven
times the pre-NAFTA level, while the minimum wage stands at only four
times the pre-NAFTA level.</P>
<P>Yet despite overwhelming evidence of NAFTA’s failure, the Obama
administration has made it a priority for next year to sign the TPP, a
sweeping pact with 11 Pacific Rim nations premised on expanding the NAFTA
model. Past efforts to expand NAFTA throughout Latin America via a Free
Trade Area of the Americas and to Asia via an Asian Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) Free Trade Agreement failed as the major economies in
each region sought to avoid the damage they observed NAFTA causing within
the United States and Mexico.</P>
<P>“Given NAFTA’s devastating outcomes, few of the corporations or think
tanks that sold it as a boon for all of us in the 1990s like to talk about
it, but the reality is that their promises failed, the opposite occurred
and millions of people were severely harmed,” said Wallach. “Now the same
interests that dished out lies to sell NAFTA are at it again to push the
TPP, but the difference is that 20 years of the NAFTA experience has
turned Americans against these sorts of deals. Apparently politicians have
noticed, because in Congress across the political spectrum, opposition is
only growing to the TPP and the Fast Track trade authority that was used
to railroad NAFTA through
Congress.”</P></DIV></DIV></DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>