NAFTA Is Good for America, But It’s Falling to Canada and Mexico to Explain Why
NAFTA Is Good for America, But It’s Falling to Canada and Mexico to Explain Why
The real definition of “unfair trade is violating the rules or is going against the principles of a market economy. NAFTA already has provisions to fight that,” said Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Secretary Luis Videgaray at AS/COA's Mexico City conference.
U.S. president Donald Trump has been dithering on the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta, since he took office, threatening to tear it up one minute and deciding to keep it the next.
While he makes up his mind, Nafta’s other members, Canada and Mexico, have taken it upon themselves to brief Americans on why it’s in their best interest to keep it. “It’s kind of our job as Mexicans and Canadians to be specialists in the US,” said Canada’s foreign affairs minister, Chrystia Freeland, during a May 23 conference organized by the Americas Society/Council of the Americas in Mexico City. “Americans are not always that focused on us and are not always that aware of their relationship with us.”
Both Mexico’s and Canada’s economies rely heavily on trade, and depend on the US more than the US depends on them. During the conference, Freeland, along with her Mexican counterpart Luis Videgaray and Mexican economics minister Ildefonso Guajardo, laid out a remarkably similar set of pro-Nafta arguments to debunk Trump’s myths about trade.
Here are the top four:
Myth 1: Nafta is bad for the US
Trump has painted Nafta as a losing proposition for the US on grounds that Mexico’s cheap wages have driven American producers south of the border and its cheaper products have inflated the US’s trade deficit. Canada and Mexico have been fighting that idea in Washington, DC over the past few months....
