Fulfilling the Promise of NAFTA: A New Strategy For U.S.-Mexican Relations

Publication Date: September 2002

Publisher: Heritage Foundation (Washington, D.C.)

Author(s): John P. Sweeney

Research Area: Trade

Keywords: Trade and foreign aid

Type: Report

Coverage: Mexico

Abstract:

The Clinton Administration has lost sight of America's vital interests in the Western Hemisphere. With both eyes focused firmly on domestic U.S. politics, the Administration has dropped trade expansion from its Latin American policy agenda while adopting a more aggressive stance not only against illegal immigration from Mexico, but against drug trafficking in the Americas. However, the Administration is not alone in its retreat from free trade. In Congress, some longtime free traders from both parties are also backpedaling from trade expansion and from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Populist proponents of protectionism have tapped into voter anxieties about the health of the U.S. economy and job security by misrepresenting NAFTA as the cause of the Mexican peso crisis, declining manufacturing wages in the U.S., rising illegal immigration from Mexico, and increased drug trafficking.