What is NAFTA ?

NAFTA, passed by the U.S. Congress in  1994,  has produced  massive migrations of exploited workers, refugees, displaced farmers, and  agricultural workers, as a result of an  unjust global political and economic system ( neo liberalism) that works for the benefit of transnational corporations and at the expense of working people. Most of the jobs created in Mexico come without benefits and without a written contract.  Salaries in Mexico today are lower than they were when NAFTA was signed.

Much of the current wave of migration to the United States from

Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean can be traced to NAFTA , CAFTA, and other unjust “free trade” agreements that enabled subsidized U.S. agribusiness to flood these societies with cheap produce, destroying the livelihoods of millions of small farmers and other rural workers.

            NAFTA created a loss of over 680,000  jobs in the U.S. and over a million jobs in Mexico. People who lost their jobs moved to the cities or to the U.S. producing immigration.  NAFTA was a trade agreement for the corporations.  U.S. owned transnational corporations, including  Ford, Chrysler, Apple, and more eliminated jobs in the U.S. and moved these jobs to other nations where labor was cheaper.

            Economic change forced by NAFTA made a small group of people in Mexico much richer, and a group of people in the U.S. much richer, but it made the vast majorities in both countries poorer.  A “free trade” agreement with Columbia would repeat this process.

         A  goal of trade agreements is to make it profitable  for U.S. corporations to relocate their manufacturing  to Mexico and other developing countries. This has the effect of putting U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world.  This eliminate manufacturing jobs in the U.S.  and it pressures U.S. workers and unions to accept concessionary bargaining to keep jobs here.