Free Trade With Mexico

It was with great interest that I read Jorge Castaneda’s article about free trade and immigration (“Again, People Are Mexico’s No. 1 Export,” Column Left, March 24). He has always been vocal about his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement. It is interesting to see, however, how he rejects the fallacy so often used by NAFTA opponents in this country: the notion that free trade will create the loss of thousands of U.S. jobs because companies will feel encouraged to move to Mexico seeking lower wages. As Castaneda notes, “American exports to Mexico have grown far more rapidly than Mexican exports to the United States. While there is no perfect correlation between trade and jobs, this indicates that for now, more jobs are probably being created in the United States than in Mexico as a result of trade.”

Free trade is not a zero-sum game in which one wins necessarily at the expense of the other. The ensuing recovery of the Mexican economy has generated nearly 400,000 new jobs in the United States, as a result of the dramatic increase in U.S. exports to Mexico in the last five years. The average Mexican consumer spends $300 per capita on American goods. Compare this against the $265 per capita that the much richer Europeans spend on U.S.-made goods. NAFTA means greater prosperity for the United States.

As in this country, in Mexico the main opposition to NAFTA is based on political arguments, not economic ones. Like Castaneda, in Mexico some people think that our country should be negotiating other issues and agendas. In contrast, we think that the trade agreement needs to be sold on its economic merits, in the understanding that once NAFTA is given a chance, trade will facilitate even more the mutual cooperation that already characterizes the bilateral relationship in a wide range of areas, such as the fight against drug trafficking and border pollution.

JOSE ANGEL PESCADOR, Consul General of Mexico in Los Angeles