The problems of NAFTA are highly scrutinized in the world.
NAFTA has been exceedingly criticized. For example, the furious gibes of Phil English, “Clearly, NAFTA has never delivered on its promises…We need to redesign NAFTA so it’s not a race to the bottom.” This is despite the fact that NAFTA has also been recognized as one of the most important developments in the comprehensive North American economy.
Economically Speaking
The United States economy has waxed and waned, but it has been accused of waning more than waxing. Subsequently, any influence that contributes to the loss of American jobs would be met with inevitable hostility, no matter the actual purpose. Unfortunately, NAFTA shares this fate, as it has been held responsible for the loss of over 1 million jobs between 1994 and 2002. The logic behind this is that it is cheaper to procure labor in Mexico and as a result, a large proportion of U.S. manufacturers moved their production away from the United States. Specifically, jobs were lost, wages lowered, and worker rights were discarded willingly in exchange for job security.
Independence
A cited consequence of the henceforth merged economy of North America is that each nation involved would lose a degree of sovereignty. North America’s economic growth would be dependent on each country, with the possibility of negative developments in one country adversely affecting the rest of North America. This also creates vulnerabilities in some markets, given that if one country has a stronger market presence than the other, smaller businesses within the weaker market could fail as a result.
A Crisis in Mexico
There are a compendium of quotes from U.S. House of Representative member Stephen Lynch accosting NAFTA’s expense on the Mexican economy, “As for the expected boon to the Mexican economy, we have seen none of these gains, and instead we have seen NAFTA’s detrimental impact on the Mexican workers.” Canada has cited similar concerns and complaints, and due to the same concern; the merging of the three economies would dilute the respective economy of each country. Cited results are that Mexican workers have lost millions of jobs and wages have fallen.
The majority of problems posited to be the result of NAFTA are indicative of one overall weakness of the legislation, which is that it has capacitated larger business entities to be more exploitive. Steps should be taken to bar exploitation through preventative measures.