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by Rep. Bernie Sanders
Last month, along with six other members of the U.S. Congress, I visited Mexico on a Teamster sponsored trip in order to assess what NAFTA has done to Mexico. What we saw and heard was not pretty. We encountered horrendous poverty, environmental degradation and a lawless and corrupt environment. We talked with mothers who couldn't afford to send their kids to school, workers who were fired for the crime of trying to organize a union and religious workers who were trying to protect young women from the mass murders and rapes which were taking place in Ciudad Juarez, right across the border from El Paso. We also met people who displayed enormous courage and tenacity.
It's pretty well accepted that in the ten years since its enactment, NAFTA has been a disaster for workers in the United States. A small pre-NAFTA trade deficit with Mexico and Canada has exploded to an $85 billion trade deficit. NAFTA has cost us almost 900,000 jobs, many of them in the manufacturing sector that paid decent wages. With cheap labor available around the corner, NAFTA has enabled companies to suppress wages, contributing to the (much ignored) reality that millions of Americans are now working longer hours for lower wages than they used to.
But at least, say NAFTA apologists, the trade agreement has been a boon to the Mexican economy and has improved the lives of our poor neighbors to the south. If only it were true. Since NAFTA, poverty has increased in Mexico, real wages have declined and the minimum wage there has lost almost 50% of its purchasing power. Perhaps most significantly, Mexico's agricultural sector has lost 1.3 million jobs over the last ten years. Mexican farmers, unable to compete with subsidized, cheap corn from American agri-business corporations, have been forced off the land and into Mexico's larger cities or across the border as an illegal immigrant. As stark as these statistic are, they cannot begin to convey what our delegation witnessed in Mexico -- the true human price being extracted from the Mexican people by our trade policy.
In the Anapra 'colonia' of Juarez we visited the dilapidated shack of a young mother who had come north for a better life. One light bulb, a dirt floor and no health care available for her sick child. Not an uncommon situation for that neighborhood. At a nearby clinic we were told that many of the illnesses they deal with resulted from malnutrition and other dietary problems. In another home a mother feared for the well-being of her daughter who traveled an hour and a half to work in a maquiladora factory - where she earned $35 a week. Would she make it home safely or become another "disappeared" whose body would be found in the desert?
In the town of Puebla, which has 1400 maquilas, we met with textile workers who made blue jeans for export to the United States. They had the radical idea that they should have minimal rights on the job and be paid when they worked overtime. They were fired when they tried to form a real union. (In Mexico, almost all union workers are represented by "official" unions that are authorized by the government and sponsored by the companies. They do nothing to represent the interests of workers). In Puebla, we also met with the leader of one of the few independent unions in the country, Jose Luis, President of El Sindicato Independente de Trabajadores de VW. His auto union, under difficult circumstances, has managed to negotiate a contract with VW which pays most workers there $25 a day - a very good wage in Mexico.
In the countryside, we met farmers who were displaced by cheap food imports. In an attempt to compete, some of them have created a cooperative business where local corn is converted into tortillas and sold in the cities. While they were cautiously optimistic about this new enterprise, they detailed the devastation that has occurred in their rural communities since NAFTA was implemented.
In the U.S. Congress, a funny thing is happening with regard to trade policy. More and more members, Republicans and Democrats, are finding it harder and harder to defend free trade policies when they see the devastating loss of decent-paying jobs that are occurring in their own communities. I know of a number of members who voted for NAFTA who now see that vote as a mistake. I know of no member who voted against NAFTA who regrets that vote. Interestingly, when I recently introduced legislation to repeal Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China (PNTR), 15 conservative Republicans joined 42 Democrats as co-sponsors.
The word is getting out and the momentum is building. Unfettered free trade has been a disaster not only for Americans, but for the working people of Mexico and Canada as well. We need trade policies that benefit workers, and not just the multi-national corporations who are leading us to a race to the bottom.
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