NAFTA update sure to fall short
On Wednesday, trade representatives from the United States, Mexico and Canada begin a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement triggered by the Trump administration in April.
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump was tough on NAFTA, the ever-controversial 1994 trade pact with Canada and Mexico. His victory delivered a crushing blow to the powerful probusiness, bipartisan trade coalition that had endured since 1993m when Bill Clinton asked Republicans to help to ratify NAFTA over the objections of his own base and House Democrats.
The vacuum left by the traditional free-trade coalition’s demise was already shifting the politics on this issue before Trump’s arrival — as President Barack Obama’s inability to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership showed. Nevertheless, Trump’s victory handed him a historic opportunity to ask trade critics across the political spectrum for input on how to redesign NAFTA and build a fair-trade majority in Congress.
But he’s not doing that. Trump’s trade team published a 17-page “negotiating plan” in July that reveals neither a commitment to transparency nor any real effort to address core concerns of workers, environmentalists, consumer advocates, local governments and other trade critics.
Trump could have built bridges to both right and left by seeking elimination of the widely despised and antidemocratic Investor-State Dispute Resolution rules that let foreign corporations sue local governments — before a panel of corporate lawyers — for unlimited compensation, if they think new environmental, labor or other regulations have damaged their bottom line. Trump is not challenging that.
Trump could have put muscle behind his claim to safeguard workers’ rights in all NAFTA countries. Instead, the administration hides the reality that U.S. calls to establish wage and work hours laws in Canada, Mexico and the United States are nullified by the fact that no wage floor is mandated anywhere. The race to the bottom continues.
Trump could have strengthened public trust by publishing proposals made by U.S. negotiators and encouraging public comment at the end of each negotiating round. But his team decided to keep the details secret.
Trump could have pushed programs to help rural Mexican communities, where millions of farmers were (and continue to be) displaced in NAFTA’s wake. Such a commonsense gesture aimed at helping Mexicans stay or return home would show respect for Mexican dignity. It would have been an olive branch to the Latino communities offended by Trump, but it won’t happen.
Had Trump sincerely reached out, he would have found allies and potentially transformed the political landscape on trade. He would also have gotten a solid win on a legacy issue.
But no one really expected Trump to act like a statesman or sincerely fight on behalf of the disenfranchised Americans he claimed to give voice to at the Republican Convention. Rather than battle for something new, Trump is playing the ol’ switcheroo with an update to NAFTA likely more damaging than its original version.
With his administration awash in scandal, Trump desperately wants a signature win before the 2018 congressional election. That is why we are hurtling down a murky path on a very complex issue.
Trump’s 2016 message on trade was blunt and exuded animosity toward Mexicans and other foreigners, but it resonated with millions of Americans, especially in places where life has changed for the worse since NAFTA was ratified almost a quarter century ago. But Trump’s new NAFTA won’t help people in places where good jobs have vanished and today’s wages don’t keep up with living costs.
As for a new NAFTA that is potentially worse than the old one? No thanks.
Ted Lewis is the director of the Human Rights Program of Global Exchange, a human rights organization in San Francisco. Will Wiltschko is the director of the California Trade Justice Coalition.