Reply #31: I can agree to that.

[MGKrebs]

I guess my point is that whenever I try to engage on this (I feel as if I haven't been clued in on some secret because I don't see the big evilness of NAFTA) the reasons given for NAFTA= bad eventually end up with "China", and I think it's possible that things would have been WORSE for Mexico without NAFTA. At least NAFTA attempted to put some jobs in Mexico. The fact that most companies leapfrogged right over Mexico and went to the Far East is a different problem.

My recollection is that it was supposed to be bad for the US but pretty good for Mexico. How did those farmers feel about it at the time? Were they OK with the prospect of getting company jobs and joining the economy? Did few or none of these farmers own their property? Is there a problem with Mexico's property laws? Could they not get jobs on the "corporate" farm, farming the same land? If not, is the problem mechanization? How is that a NAFTA issue? If a company owns the land and wants to mechanize it, how did NAFTA facilitate that? If they don't own the land, how did NAFTA allow them to get it? What is a better solution? Are we saying that leaving much of Mexico as undeveloped rural subsistence farming is a better way? Don't we want to encourage poverty relief and the social discord that often results from poverty?

I'm not saying NAFTA is perfect by any means, but I just haven't found that it is the great evil responsible for all the ills of the world either. We can't solve problems if we don't identify (and talk about) them accurately. I will continue to read more about this.