Nafta and Mercosur
While still in office, President Bill Clinton emerged from a meeting with 33 Western Hemisphere leaders and made an ambitious pledge. By 2005, he promised, a ''Free Trade Area of the Americas would stretch from Alaska to Argentina'' and ''will be the world's largest market.'' He had the idea of combining all trading blocks and emerging as one huge western connection. The question now remains, should the new President strive to accomplish the goal of Clinton? Would the combination of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the South American Common Market (MERCOSUR) be a good idea, or even possible? Would it be in our best interests to link ourselves in contract with not only Canada and Mexico but Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay as well? The answer is definitely yes. As it is now, NAFTA is starting to fail in many people's eyes. Though it has brought success to some, it has caused distress for most. The inclusion of the South American countries and the MERCOSUR ways could only make the United States more successful economically. To understand why things need to change in order to better our economy we must first know the background information. On January 1st, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement wen
An American trade official who deals with Latin America said the Clinton Administration viewed the spread of regional agreements that excluded Washington not as a challenge to American leadership but as something that ''can be very helpful to the Free Trade Area of the America's process.'' When Latin American nations link up among themselves, he added, ''it makes it easier for them to go the last step,'' when the time comes to deal with the United States. ''Frankly,'' the official continued, ''we would be doing that ourselves if we had the authority. We are not as far along in the process as we would like to have been.''(TIME,1999) Even a cursory glance at trade figures reveals that Washington's economic stake in Latin American and the Caribbean, the fastest-growing market for American exports, is enormous. United States trade within the Western Hemisphere is not only much larger than trade with Europe or Asia, but consistently registers a surplus that helps offset large deficits elsewhere. An important feature of NAFTA is the amount of high paying jobs that it is supposed to create. Unfortunately after seven years, the number of high paying jobs has not increased as drastically as hoped. Independent analysts point out that the trade deal has cost U.S. workers more than 400,000 jobs. "America's chief export is jobs. Thanks to NAFTA, U.S. corporations can eliminate middle-class jobs here, move the factory to Mexico, pay subsistence wages to people there, then send their stoves and other products back to the U.S. without paying a dime in tariffs, selling the products for the same high price they've always charged. The wage difference is pocketed by the corporation." (Hightower, p.144). With NAFTA, we were also promised new "high paying" jobs. The U.S. Department of Labor projects that the professions with the greatest expected future growth in the U.S. are cashiers, waiters and waitresses, janitors and retail clerks. These and other lower-wage service jobs are the kind that will most likely be available to workers displaced by NAFTA. NAFTA was also supposed to lift the living standards in Mexico. Since NAFTA was enacted, nearly 8 million Mexicans were documented as earning less than Mexico's legal minimum wage of $3.40 a day, 20% more than in 1993. The South American Common Market is now under siege from all sides, torn by disputes between Brazil and Argentina, its two main members, and facing mounting external pressures, mostly from the United States. t into effect, creating the world's largest free trade ar
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Approximate Word count = 1718
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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