Negatives Of Nafta

Imagine being crammed in a un-air conditioned room with hundreds of workers in the Mexico heat. Imagine sewing all day and developing sore wrists which can lead to tendonitis. Imagine after nine grueling hours of work not getting paid enough to purchase food and other necessities for your family. Maquiladoras are very well known among the Mexico and US border. They conduct under tariff free materials which are imported to the companies. The North American Free Trade Agreement has a huge advancement and have grown by employing tons of Mexican workers. NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) promised to increase workplace efficiency, help corporations, and to improve the lives of many workers. In my opinion, NAFTA did not keep their promise. They definitely did not improve the lives of many workers and everything else they guaranteed. NAFTA has not kept its promises because they work in terrible conditions, they do not get paid enough, and they are giving up hope.

Last but not least, NAFTA has given United States access to much needed cheap resources. As a huge manufacturing country, the U.S. is always in demand of natural resources. Canada and Mexico, on the other hand, are resource-rich countries and over 12% of their exports is petroleum products (The Observatory of Economic Complexity). NAFTA has lowered the tariffs thus giving Americans more access to its neighbours’ oil reserves. Futhermore, when signing NAFTA, Canada agreed that they will not reduce oil exports to the U.S. even during shortage, unless Canada cuts its own supplies. That is, the percentage of oil exports to the U.S. cannot be changed. The United States therefore receives less impacts from fluctuating world oil price, and is guaranteed a steady supply of oil for its industries. In addition to that, NAFTA makes it possible for the U.S. to take advantage of the large educated work force in Mexico. American businesses set up factories along Mexican boundary and employ local workers to assemble products from imported U.S. components, the final products are then exported back to the U.S. Known as maquiladora, these factories have the worst working condition in North America (Mexican Rural Development Research Reports). The workers have no human rights or health

NAFTA has been a controversial agreement since it was approved. It raises the high attention from people recently because Donald Trump wants to cancel this agreement. However, some opponents think that NAFTA has brought more benefits to Canada, Canada should not agree to cancel the NAFTA. In my view, NAFTA should not be abandoned because it has positively influenced Canada’s economy by increasing investment, the number of Canadian jobs and consumer’s purchasing power.

This means that people that were not able to afford the products can now buy them causing an increase of sales in The United States, Mexico and Canada. No tariffs allowed businesses to compete in the world marketplace to expand and deliver customer goods. Big manufacturing companies saw that the cheap labor was available in Mexico and moved their manufacturing companies. Many of these companies had unions and the unions were negotiating for higher wages. This could have caused a company to go bankrupt or invest in machines (robots) to replace people. This in turn led to manufacturing companies moving to Mexico in order to make profit and continue lower prices. As a business owner I would agree that just keeping a company afloat is not good business. Profits need to be met or company can go bankrupt and jobs will be lost. Many people lost their jobs due manufacturing companies moving to Mexico for profit. About 700,000 jobs were lost in the United States with 55,000 being in Texas. Pg 18. Texas Public Policy released a study that “El Paso is reported to be "hit" the hardest by NAFTA. About 10,000 workers have been effected by the loss of jobs, yet the El Paso region has an increase of exports creating 38,000 jobs since NAFTA”. Economic growth is seen in El Paso. El Paso is growing and seems to be under construction for the last 5 years. The transportation industry is booming as evident by new businesses being built such as motels and convenient stores near the main highways. Construction to accommodate the transportation industry creates new jobs which leads to economic growth. In the last five years of traveling to El Paso and back to Corpus Christi, no matter the time of day, the highways are busy with big truck/18 wheelers. Texas has

The article, “Displaced People: NAFTA’s Most Important Product”, written by David Bacon for North American Congress on Latin America, discusses how economic crises have caused Mexicans to be displaced. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has caused the price of crops in Mexico to lower so much that there are no economic benefits from planting them. There are around 500,000 indigenous Mexicans from the state of Oaxaca now living in the United States as farmworkers. The article states that between 2000 and 2005, the countryside in Mexico has lost a million and a half jobs. This causes indigenous Mexicans who relied on planting crops to make money to migrate to the United States. Families that cannot migrate to the United States and are now jobless will go hungry as they search for buyers to buy the crops they grow. While the crops they grow continue to lose money value, the price of the food that they need to survive keeps increasing. After Mexico adopted NAFTA, the price of tortillas has more than doubled and companies continue to monopolize tortilla production. Poor Mexicans are left with no ability to make money and

The North American Free Trade Agreement, commonly known as the NAFTA, is a trade agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico launched to enable North America to become more competitive in the global marketplace (Amadeo, 2011). The NAFTA is regarded as “one of the most successful trade agreements in history” for its impact on increases in agricultural trade and investment among the three contracting nations (North American Free Trade Agreement, 2011). Supporters and opponents of the NAFTA have argued the effects of the agreement on participating nations since its inception; yet, close examination proves that NAFTA has had a relatively positive impact on the economies of the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

When countries have needs but not the capacity to satisfy those demands they enter into trading through the exchange of surplus, produce to help their trading partners. Canada, Mexico, and the United States created a treaty to establish a relationship that can benefit everyone in this process known as NAFTA. This agreement has been criticized and has been blamed for hurting the US economy more than helping. Although speculations may be misguided, I do not know much about this agreement, and I must research multiple sources. This paper seeks to understand if NAFTA has produced significant benefits for Canada, Mexico, and the United States economies.

NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, is a treaty between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. It is very important especially to American farmers, because it allows the farmers to ship major amounts of corn, cotton, rice, and soybeans to Canada and Mexico. CEO Dwight Roberts said, “There is nothing better going on for the commodities we grow than NAFTA. We are very fortunate that we are next door to Mexico, a country of 120 million people who buy so much of our commodities. For rice, Mexico is the number one market in the world.”

NAFTA was a very hot topic in the 1990's and was pushed by mainstream media as the savior of the western world. The propagandists pushing NAFTA were met with heavy resistance from proponents that were ultimately proven right. Ross Perot famously stated there would be a "giant sucking sound" and all jobs would start to move southward into Mexico.

There is a lot of controversy about the pros and cons of the agreement. An article from The Balance shows that there are 3 main disadvantages to NAFTA. First, many US manufacturing jobs were sent to Mexico because costs would be lower. The second point is that many workers who kept their jobs in the U.S. had to accept lower wages. The third point is that Mexico’s workers were exploited because of the maquiladora programs, when the materials are imported to Mexico, cheaper labor is used, and the goods are finished and exported. The impact of the trade agreement is definitely beneficial on a large scale for the countries but is it at the expense of the average worker? In the US, the average workers are losing jobs because the labor is cheaper in Mexico. Therefore, they are unable to fulfill their American dream or improve their financial status. In Mexico, the workers consider themselves fortunate to have a factory job, even though the wages are quite low. Most Americans would definitely not work for the same menial

Overall, NAFTA has benefited the U.S. more as compared to Mexico since it has seeks to reduce government regulations, introduce policy reform and remove trade barriers.however mexican witnessed a significant economic growth since the existence of the treaty. These are fundamental requirements for a strong, capitalist economy. However, in the case of farm products such as corn is taken into account, NAFTA cannot claim sole rights to the significant increase in corn trade between the U.S. and Mexico as this is also dependent factors such as reduction of corn prices by the Mexican government to bring it in line with global corn prices and increased corn imports by Mexico due to drought like climatic conditions. Therefore if trade of corn products

Relating to the press release “Mexican farmer's daughter: NAFTA destroyed us”, provided by Prof. King. We know since NAFTA was signed in 1994, Mexico lost over 900,000 farming jobs in the first decade of NAFTA. Boosting of manufacturing industry, increasing import low price corn from U.S, and lack of subsidy of corn production are major issues asking Mexican mom and pop farmers give up traditional farming work and move to big cities.

Clearly NAFTA has led to widespread job loss, with more than 200,000 U.S. workers certified as NAFTA casualties under just one narrow government program. Since the 1970's, there has been a steady trickle of

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an agreement signed by the three major countries of the continent of North America. The agreement seeks for the creation of a trilateral trading block in the continent. It came into force on date, 01 January 1994. NAFTA has superseded the prior signed Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA consists of two supplements namely the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) and the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC). Post signing, NAFTA caused the creation of the largest free trade region in the world, catering for growth in the economy along with causing for betterment in the living standards for millions of people in the member countries. In spite

NAFTA has played an integral role in relations amongst the US, Canada, and Mexico. The purpose it serves to the US is vital to continuing to keep cost low and interference from foreign countries.