Super NAFTA

I'm generally in favor of Free Trade, while hoping that we can address some of the problems it causes, both here and abroad, (instead of the conservative strategy of ignoring them or denying them). Thomas Friedman who is also in favor of Free Trade, but who favors the denial strategy for dealing with problems, talked about Mexico in a recent article for the New York Times. He has some suggestions on how we should help Mexico.

"Which is why it's time to start thinking out of the box - or maybe into a bigger box. "This situation doesn't have to end in crisis, but it will if Mexico, the U.S. and Canada fail to act," says Robert Pastor, director of the Center for North American Studies at American University and author of "Toward a North American Community."

Mr. Pastor has proposed a way out - deeper integration. Canada, Mexico and America have to go beyond Nafta and start building "a North American Community" - which addresses continental issues, from transportation to terrorism, in a wider framework. Among other things, Mr. Pastor proposes that the U.S., Canada and Mexico establish a North America investment fund, which, over 10 years, will invest in roads, telecommunications and post-secondary education in Mexico. (Amazingly, there is no highway today that runs directly from resource-rich southern Mexico to the U.S. border. You have to go through clogged Mexico City.) When the European Union brought in the poorer countries of Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland, it didn't just tell them, "O.K., now you're in our free-trade zone, let the market rip." The E.U. invested big, big money in roads and education in the four new states and narrowed their income gap with the rest of Europe, giving their workers an incentive to stay home."

To be fair there is a lot of positives in this statement. The problem, however, is that Mr. Friedman is not really talking about a partnership relationship. The relationship between the United States and Mexico would probably be a bit a bit more like Teacher / Pupil. The United States, particularly under President Bush's Administration, has little to no desire to treat Mexico like an equal partner (A big part of President Bush's world view is that other nations do what we tell them, not we listen to other nations).

So while there are elements to this idea I like (certainly Mexico could use some investments in "roads, telecommunications and post-secondary education"), I'm not sure it would really work in the long run, unless we had a change in how the United States dealt with other nations.