Opposing view: NAFTA update falls short of what's needed

The relatively small changes to NAFTA made through the U. S.- MexicoCanada Agreement represent a missed opportunity.

A generation ago, trade agreements were almost entirely about matters like tariffs. With NAFTA, a wide range of nontrade matters were brought in. These included new rights for foreign investors to sue over domestic regulations on the environment, financial stability and protections for Big Pharma against lower- cost generics.

But just as important as what was in is what was left out. Unlike in the postwar trade order envisioned by President Franklin Roosevelt, governments were not required to prevent private businesses from restraining competition. Had that been ratified, the monopolistic abuses by companies like Amazon and Facebook might never have been allowed to happen.

There were no obligations to promote environmentally sustainable development. And no attention was paid to ensuring that working people and labor unions were left at least as strong as before the deal took place.

But today is a new day, on both sides of the border. The leading candidates in the Democratic primary are proposing more expansive agendas than we have seen in decades, including taxing the wealthy and enacting a Green New Deal. Last year, Mexicans voted in the hugely popular Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to do much the same. While Donald Trump looks wistfully backward to a past that excluded too many, a new generation of progressives are championing big structural change.

The second take on the second take on NAFTA is that the USMCA does not deliver on what the moment demands. It preserves most of the original agreement’s tilt toward big businesses and polluters. Indeed, many of the lastminute changes merely ensure that the new deal does not go still further in that direction. While there are improvements in labor protections, this is hardly a new model that adequately differentiates Democrats from Trump. That is to their detriment.