Wilson Begins Trade Talks With Salinas : Commerce: After the Mexico City meeting, he predicts an explosion of new markets between the two countries if artificial barriers are eliminated.

Gov. Pete Wilson met Wednesday with President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and endorsed the Mexican leader’s “vigorous and effective” steps to open his country to freer trade with the United States.

Starting two days of talks here aimed at boosting California exports to a growing Mexican market, Wilson pledged to work with Salinas to secure U.S. approval of a North American Free Trade Agreement that will permanently link the two countries’ economies.

“If we knock down barriers that are artificially constraining trade, we are going to see an explosion of trade, as there will be new markets for California products in Mexico and new markets for Mexican products throughout the United States and Canada,” Wilson told reporters after the 20-minute meeting at Los Pinos, the Mexican presidential residence.

“We are in solid agreement with President Salinas that a healthy and prosperous Mexico is the most beneficial thing that could happen to California,” he said, adding that new exports will help revive the state’s slumping economy by creating new jobs.

The governor brought a delegation of three cabinet officials and 19 California business leaders for working sessions with Mexican counterparts. He met Wednesday with the Mexican secretaries of commerce, urban development and ecology, and agriculture.

Mexico is California’s second-largest export market after Japan, and its purchases from the state--principally electronics, medical equipment, processed food and consumer goods--grew from $3.7 billion in 1989 to $4.7 billion in 1990.

Salinas’ government and the Bush Administration are committed to winding up negotiations and enacting a treaty this year that would phase out trade barriers. But Mexican officials worry that the U.S. recession, criticism by U.S. labor leaders that the treaty would cost American jobs, and Bush’s drop in public opinion polls will delay a vote in Congress until after the U.S. elections in November.

Nonetheless, Mexico’s booming economy and its unilateral relaxation of tariffs has intensified international competition for its market of 80 million consumers. Wilson said he brought the high-powered California delegation here “to fully explore bilateral (business) opportunities even before a free-trade agreement is achieved.”

The delegation includes Philip J. Quigley, the president of Pacific Bell; James P. Miscoll, vice chairman of the Bank of America; and Michael R. Peevey, president of Southern California Edison. Also along are executives of the California Chamber of Commerce and the California State World Trade Commission, which is drawing up a list of products to promote here, from kiwi fruit to computers.

Wilson dismissed labor leaders’ opposition to a U.S.-Mexico accord as “traditional protectionism that has failed every time it has been tried.” He called Salinas’ moves toward freer trade “a quiet but dramatic revolution . . . (that) is going to benefit Mexico and California.”

Aides to the governor said new exports to Mexico have generated 50,000 new jobs over the last four years. They said the number of job losses related to more competitive Mexican products is hard to calculate, but far fewer.

The governor said one concern about free trade--the uneven environmental standards in Mexico--was overcome in his meeting with Mexican Commerce Secretary Jaime Serra Puche.

California growers have been worried that legal limits on the pesticides they can use on their produce put them at an unfair disadvantage against Mexican producers, who are now under less stringent environmental curbs.

Wilson said Serra Puche told him that “provisions to regulate the use of agricultural pesticides will be part of the free-trade accord.”