The Vital Treaty That Must Not Die : Dealing with legitimate criticism of NAFTA

At his press conference Tuesday, President Clinton reiterated his “interest” in seeing the North American Free Trade Agreement among this country, Mexico and Canada approved by Congress. He went out of his way to praise his Mexican counterpart, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, for all he has done to open up his country’s economy, often to the benefit of U.S. companies doing business there.

But unless the new Administration starts pushing NAFTA more aggressively, Clinton’s words of praise for Salinas will ring not only hollow but hypocritical.

Officially, Congress has until the end of the year to approve NAFTA, a historic trade pact that would create a free market of more than 350 million consumers.

Realistically, however, Congress will have to act on NAFTA fairly soon or the pact will be nit-picked to death by protectionists or lost amid the shuffle of other congressional business. In either case, a great opportunity to increase U.S. trade with our closest neighbors, keep Mexico stable and slow the migration of poor Mexican workers into this country will have been lost.

Currently, approval of NAFTA is being held up while negotiators discuss parallel agreements on environmental and labor issues, largely at the behest of U.S. unions and critics like Ross Perot who worry that U.S. companies may try to use NAFTA as an excuse to move jobs, pay lower wages or pollute south of the border.

Some want the parallel agreements to force Mexico to abide by U.S. labor and environmental standards. But that would put the United States in the position of dictating to a sovereign country what its laws should be, a form of imperialism that Mexico will not--indeed, should not--tolerate. The Mexicans also argue that in many instances their labor and environmental laws are comparable to or even exceed U.S. laws.

Congress should approve NAFTA while also enacting legislation that would require any U.S. firm doing business in Mexico to abide by all U.S. and Mexican labor and environmental standards. That way any U.S. firm that violates the law would be liable in this country as well as in Mexico.

Such legislation could work somewhat similarly to the so-called Sullivan Principles, rules that required U.S. companies doing business with South Africa to comply with U.S. laws against racial discrimination. While such laws did not directly challenge that country’s apartheid system, they did put companies on notice that they would be held to the higher U.S. standard.

Herein lies a solid approach that can satisfy those U.S. interest groups that truly want to improve NAFTA instead of merely sabotaging it, which is clearly what the most rabid protectionists really want to do.