Hi group,
Here are two takes (in three articles) on how our neighbors are viewing Obama's pledge to revisit some aspects of NAFTA. Read through them and let me know what you think. I'd be interested in your thoughts on the subject. Should Obama change it or leave it as it is? And if he does change it, what changes? Big ones? Cosmetic around the edges? Or what?
Next week you'll receive an extended piece that I wrote on NAFTA recently, so I'll hold off on my opinions until wee hear from all of you.
Blessings,
Stan
Mexico worries about Obama agenda
Government, business leaders unsure if he wants to change NAFTA
By DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau
Nov. 20, 2008, 9:12PM
MEXICO CITY — While Brack Obama fascinates many Mexicans, government officials and business executives here are concerned about what his administration might mean for their country.
No international relationship is more important to Mexico than that with the United States, and both countries have been governed for the past eight years by conservatives who shared a common ideology, if not always national interests.
As a Texan, George W. Bush has been knowledgeable about both Mexico and border issues. But Obama, a liberal Democrat from a Northern state, remains an unknown to many here.
Mexican officials want to make sure the president-elect and his supporters understand how essential Mexico remains to the United States.
"We have to convince our citizens on both sides of the border that we are co-stakeholders in this very important relationship," Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's U.S. ambassador, told Chronicle reporters and editors during a recent visit to Houston. "If we can't do this, we'll have a very rough time."
Calderon's concerns
Mexican President Felipe Calderon met with Obama's representatives, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, while in Washington for the recent 20-nation summit on the world financial crisis.
Calderon later said he had expressed his government's concerns that a "return to protectionism would only lessen the possibilities of overcoming the current economic crisis."
In other meetings with congressional leaders, Calderon emphasized concerns about weapons smuggled from the United States that arm Mexico's drug-trafficking syndicates.
"What is going to be important is to see how fast we can have Mexico included as one of the priorities for the new administration," said Jorge Treviño, a Mexican deputy foreign minister in the 1990s.
The U.S.-Mexico relationship is complex, of course: immigration, drug trafficking and criminal violence; environmental issues and deep trade relations; a shared 2,000-mile border.
"If you look at the day-to-day impact that any country has on the security, economic well-being and prosperity of the Americans, then there is no country more important than Mexico," Saruhkan said.
Perhaps most worrying for many here is what might be Obama's intentions for the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.
The agreement — which has dropped most trade barriers among the United States, Mexico and Canada — went into effect in 1994. Since then, trade has exploded to about $900 billion annually.
But NAFTA has created losers as well. Mexican farmers complain they are being destroyed by cheap grain imports from north of the Rio Grande. Labor unions in the Midwest blame NAFTA for the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs.
A slippery slope
During the Democratic primaries, Obama repeatedly criticized NAFTA, saying that the agreement has cost the U.S.
a million jobs. He promised to renegotiate the treaty.
Sarukhan said that opening the agreement to new talks would prove a slippery slope, which, he said, would wreck the deal.
Mexico and Canada would want to renegotiate issues other that those favored by the United States, he said, and legislators in all three countries would weigh in on changes. That might be particularly risky in Mexico, he said, because an opposition-controlled Congress could scuttle many of Calderon's initiatives.
"Renegotiating NAFTA is like throwing a monkey wrench into the competitiveness of America. It's a bad idea," he said. "The probable end game of that is going to be the meltdown of what we've built over these past 15 years."
But NAFTA rarely came up during the presidential campaign, and Obama softened his message on the treaty and other trade deals, said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington think tank.
Mexican officials want to negotiate a comprehensive treaty for legalizing Mexican workers, at least temporarily, in the United States.
Former President Vicente Fox pushed hard to win such an agreement with Bush after both took office in 2001. But that effort was derailed by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Like Fox, Calderon has argued that NAFTA should be "deepened" by providing for the flow of labor across the U.S. border.
"The 800-pound guerrilla in the room is labor mobility," Sarukhan said. "The fact that we have labor-intensive and capital-intensive economies living next to each other provides us with new sysnergies to be able to compete."
But Sarukhan acknowledged that an immigration deal probably couldn't be seriously discussed with Obama for a few years. "It's become too much of a toxic issue" with the American public, he said.
dudley.althaus@chron.com
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Anti-NAFTA groups prepare wish list for Obama
TheStar.com - Canada -
November 20, 2008
Tobi Cohen
THE CANADIAN PRESS
MONTREAL – Not everybody in Canada is terrified by the prospect of U.S president-elect Barack Obama reopening the North American Free Trade Agreement.
In fact, some are enthusiastically applauding the idea.
A large group of non-government organizations and union leaders is gathering in Ottawa on Friday to discuss changes they'd like to see to the landmark trade treaty in areas like the environment, labour, culture, international development and human rights.
About 40 people are expected to attend in the hopes of reaching a consensus on what amendments should be made to the Canada-U.S.-Mexico agreement once Obama takes office in January.
"He kind of threw out the renegotiation challenge, we're going to take him up on it," said Bruce Campbell, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. His group is co-hosting the event along with the Council of Canadians.
"Certainly the establishment's view is that NAFTA is great and shouldn't be reopened. That's not our view."
When Obama mused about reopening NAFTA during the presidential primaries, it was immediately cast by some political and business players as a potential crisis. After all, Canada has seen its exports to the U.S. multiply almost seven times since the first free-trade agreement took effect in 1988.
Those fears were eased somewhat by a leaked diplomatic memo, which suggested Obama's economic team had reassured Canadian officials that they would hold on to the status quo.
But Campbell and his allies hope Obama keeps his initial promise – and they're hoping to offer him some suggestions.
The groups are expected to discuss incorporating labour standards into NAFTA, scrapping energy provisions like proportional sharing and export taxes, protecting water and natural resources, and how best to protect and create manufacturing jobs.
Campbell hopes there might eventually be a meeting with the Obama administration similar to the one Canadian Council of Chief Executives president Tom d'Aquino has scheduled for next spring.
"Tom d'Aquino plans to take his 100 executives to Washington in March, maybe it's time for a delegation of NGOs from the three countries to get together," Campbell said.
Some of the participants at Friday's roundtable want to change NAFTA's controversial Chapter 11, which is designed to protect investor rights. Left-leaning groups have long argued, however, that it diminishes human rights.
The chapter allows foreign investors to circumvent local courts and sue governments before an international arbitration panel.
The Canadian Environmental Law Association, which will be at the Ottawa gathering, last week issued a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Obama urging them to repeal or amend Chapter 11.
CELA's concerns arise from a claim by Dow AgroSciences, filed in August, that alleges the province of Quebec had breached NAFTA by banning the weed killer 2,4-D.
While other regulatory agencies have not found reason to declare the product dangerous, it has been linked to neurological impairment, reproductive problems, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer lists it as a cancer-causing carcinogen.
The maker of the herbicide is seeking $2 million in compensation, plus legal fees.
Pointing to a recent Health Canada ruling that found 2,4-D could be used safely according to label directions, the company alleges the ban has no scientific merit.
The company has 90 days to file a notice of arbitration which would continue the legal challenge. Company spokeswoman Brenda Harris said that period expires Monday and that Dow will not comment before then on whether it would pursue its claim.
But CELA executive director Theresa McClenaghan believes Dow will ultimately lose based on what's happened in similar cases, but she says the company is not motivated merely by the idea of winning a legal fight.
"My sense is that their strategic reason for doing it would be to attempt to influence other provincial jurisdictions which have been considering or have been proceeding with different kinds of regulatory actions around pesticides," she said.
"Having a challenge that's been filed and not determined allows them to say, 'We have this Chapter 11 NAFTA challenge so you shouldn't do this or we'll bring a similar challenge."'
Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia are all considering similar regulations.
McClenaghan says both the U.S. and Canadian governments have acknowledged the need to include language that clarifies that environmental, health and safety regulations are not akin to ``indirect expropriation." In fact the U.S. has already included such language, she says, in more recent trade agreements signed with Chile, Singapore and Australia.
"They simply need to take their own advice," she said. "Such provisions would preclude the type of claim that Dow AgroSciences has now filed against Canada."
There are currently 13 active Chapter 11 cases against Canada listed on the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade website.
Sanjiva Sondagar, a foreign-affairs spokeswoman, said the government maintains the view that NAFTA works well, that it lets governments regulate in the public interest, and that "Canada has no plans to pursue renegotiations."
One prominent expert on Canada-U.S. relations suggests the whole discussion remains hypothetical. James Blanchard, a U.S. ambassador to Canada under Bill Clinton, said he doesn't see Obama reopening NAFTA anytime soon.
He said that issue is among the many that will be relegated to the back-burner while Obama deals with an economic crisis.
"I don't think there's any debate here right now," Blanchard said.
"There's so many other things – the financial cirsis, the auto crisis, the economy generally."
Besides, he added, the concerns that Obama so famously expressed about NAFTA during the Ohio primary had more to do with Mexico than Canada.
He said Obama was referring more to concerns about poor wages, human rights and labour standards.
"Nobody said Canada is in that category," Blanchard said.
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Some Canadians welcoming Obama NAFTA comments
4:10pm
Edmonton / iNews880.com
11/20/2008
Not everybody in Canada is terrified by the prospect of U-S president-elect Barack Obama reopening the North American Free Trade Agreement.
In fact, some are enthusiastically applauding the idea.
Non-governmental organizations and union leaders are gathering in Ottawa tomorrow.
They'll discuss changes they'd like to see to the landmark trade treaty in areas such as the environment, labour, culture, international development and human rights.
About 40 people are expected to attend in the hopes of reaching a consensus on what amendments should be made to the Canada-U-S-Mexico agreement once Obama takes office in January.
Bruce Campbell, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives which is co-hosting the meeting, says Obama kind of threw out the renegotiation challenge, and they're going to take him up on it.
A leaked diplomatic memo suggested Obama's economic team had reassured Canadian officials they would keep the status quo.
James Blanchard, a U-S ambassador to Canada under former U-S president Bill Clinton, says he doesn't see Obama reopening NAFTA anytime soon.
(The Canadian Press)