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Tories to Negotiate Deal With Mexico/U.S. Harold Lavender Representatives of the Canadian, U.S. and Mexican governments have signed a communique agreeing to seek a trilateral free trade pact by 1992. This initiative towards a continental trading bloc is very much part of the new corporate agenda. It aims to create a powerful economic bloc which can counter economic competition from the European Economic Community and Japan. The 1988 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement was a first step. The U.S. is now using it as a model for any agreement with Mexico. Ultimately, Washington's agenda does not stop at Fortress North America. It aspires to include all of Central and South America within its trading bloc. A trilateral trading pact will benefit neither Canadian, American nor Mexican workers. Canadian workers have every reason to worry about a trilateral trade pact. The B.C. Working Group on Canada-Mexico Free Trade, a B.C, Coalition of church, trade union, and community organisations, warns that a trade pact with Mexico would aggravate the de-industrialization and erosion of social standards that has already taken place as a result of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. It's estimated 225,000 Canadians have lost their jobs since the deal. A just-released study by the Working Group indicates that “(a) Canada-Mexico free trade deal will result in lower wages for British Columbia workers, reduced environmental standards, the erosion of longstanding social programs, and the meshing of this province's economy with that of a country which has a record of human rights violations.” The study quotes Jimmy Pattison, chair of the Jim Pattison Group, who stated: “Free trade with Mexico is coming. We've just done a study that determined that we can manufacture in Mexico and ship to Vancouver, including duty and freight, cheaper than we can manufacture in Vancouver.” Cheap Mexican labour in the maquiladora free trade zones along the Mexican border ... is the key factor in job losses that would result from a free trade pact with Mexico. The study documents sectors like textiles, forestry (B.C.'s key industry) and fishing that would be especially hard hit by a trade pact with Mexico. In opposing a continental free trade deal, it's important to remember the Mexican people are our allies, not our enemies. The Working Group emphasizes that it does not reject closer economic ties with Mexico. But it does argue that any new arrangement should be based on principles of social solidarity, including the rights to jobs at decent wages and the right to full participation in democratic decision making. The study cites the meeting last October between representatives of Mexican and Canadian popular organisations in Mexico and urges joint action between the people of the two countries to prevent further corporate control and domination. The forces of continental economic integration are increasingly tying the fate of Canadian and Mexican workers together. We need to educate ourselves and others about the human rights violations and the lack of democracy in Mexico. (It's widely believed that Mexican President Carlos Salinas Gortari was fraudulently elected and that opposition candidate Cuautehmoc Cardenas actually won the vote.) And we need to understand the roots of Mexico's enormous economic problems. Mexico is saddled with a crushing foreign debt that at one point reached $100 billion. This debt leaves the Mexican government vulnerable to the dictatorship of the International Monetary Fund. As a result, the Mexican government has imposed economic austerity policies which have halved the standard of living of the Mexican workers. Equally, the Mexican government has come under intense pressure to abandon the nationalistic policies that were once a trademark of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. A free trade deal with the U.S. would be the culmination of a spectacular
reversal of policy. Just a decade ago, the Mexican economy was relatively
restricted to foreign and U.S. capital and private market forces.
Unless the underlying roots of Mexico and Latin America's economic
crisis are addressed, Carlos Salinas will not be the last Latin
American leader to come begging to Washington for a free trade deal. (CX5096)
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