HATONN: NAFTA: THE NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT - Part 1
CREATOR GOD ATON/HATONN
6/6/91 #1 HATONN
U.S.-MEXICO TRADE ISSUE
Is this of heaven or hell? In all instances, the latter.
The debate over free trade with Mexico boils down to a fight over U.S. jobs--won and lost--for workers in factories displaced by the migration of those factories to south of the border. Knowing that everything the "lips" say is valid and forthright, you are hanging out there on Bush's speeches which say that he pledges to "...work with Congress to see that disclosed workers receive proper assistance and retraining" and he got "fast-track authority" to move along.
The intent is to bring Mexico into a free-trade agreement reached by the United States and Canada in 1988. And what of that trade agreement? It has been quite devastating and hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost by the Canadians, as a matter of fact--with both the U.S. and Canada planning to relocate in Mexico where there are no worthy pollution controls and extremely cheap labor.
This is a death march for American industry, chelas, and even more immoral is that which is being done to exploit the Mexicans. This becomes a slave-labor program under some nice label of wondrous non-existent morality. This trade agreement will destroy BOTH Mexican and U.S. economies.
This whole fiasco is totally entangled with the Banksters and again, this day, I feel it more worthy for you to hear it from the human recordings. ...
I ask you to simply "assume" quotation for I intend to "plagiarize" this information from an AMERICA ALMANAC printing of May 27, 1991 for it is comprehensive and shows the "other" side of this monster. I will keep to the print and if I comment, I shall do so in brackets: [H:...].
While you are reading these lines, your Congressman may be voting to authorize the Bush administration to negotiate a treaty with Mexico that will mean slave labor, the rampant spread of cholera, and throwing hundreds of thousands of workers onto the unemployment lines--on both sides of the border--all for the purpose of bailing out the Wall Street and City of London BANKS.
Doubt it? Then you haven't looked into NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement that George Bush and his banker buddies are trying to railroad through Congress on a "Fast Track".
In the graphics and text that follow, we will tell you the truth about what the Bush administration and the media have tried to see as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get economic growth started across the Americas. The Wall Street crowd--led by David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan himself--are going ape to ram this policy through.
At an early May meeting of his Council of the Americas in Washington, Rockefeller, himself, took the floor to explain just how urgent NAFTA is for the bankers: "Without the fast track, the course of history will be stopped."
Don't let your Congressman hear only Rocky's side of the story. Make sure he hears from YOU and the thousands of other Americans who are opposed to the idea of creating an Auschwitz on the U.S.-Mexican border in order to keep the banks solvent. Turn on the heat now. Congressional switchboard: 202-224-3121.
[H: We do not have space to reprint all the graphs, etc. We will effort to clarify without the diagrams.]
QUOTE:
In early spring of this year, the administration of President George Bush and leading members of the U.S. Liberal Eastern Establishment lined up behind a proposal for the implementation of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), eliminating all barriers to trade and investments between the U.S. and Mexico. NAFTA, as the proposal has come to be known, was based on extending an already existing agreement between the U.S.A. and Canada, to America's southern neighbor.
The centerpiece of NAFTA's entire free trade strategy is the expansion of the maquiladora sector of the Mexican economy, the "in-bond" assembly plants located mostly just across the border in Mexico, which use cheap Mexican labor to assemble U.S. components into finished goods--electronics and auto parts, mainly for re-export back to the U.S. Only the value added by Mexican labor is taxed on entry of the products back into the U.S.A. Properly speaking, the maquiladoras are not really part of the Mexican economy, aside from the fact that they happen to be located on Mexican territory. They are a foreign enclave, a free trade zone, which operate much like the Colon Free Trade Zone in Panama.
Growth in number of runaway plants and jobs in Mexico's maquiladora sector since 1980: From just over $2 billion in 1980, these plants exported nearly $14 billion worth of goods to the U.S. in 1990, a sixfold increase in just a decade, representing a growth rate of over 19 percent a year. Approximately half of this export value was accounted for by maquiladoras imports of intermediate goods from the U.S. Employing about 500,000 workers in 1990, the maquiladoras accounted for the equivalent of 3.5 percent of the total U.S. manufacturing workforce, working in jobs that 15 years ago were performed in the U.S.
THE BANKER'S BAILOUT
Despite what its proponents claim, the North American Free Trade Agreement is NOT fundamentally a free trade agreement. There is no need for such an accord with Mexico because there is already virtually free trade between the two countries. Beginning in 1985, the Mexican government, under the pressure of its international Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Reagan State Department, drastically reduced its previous tariff and other protective barriers. Today, there are no licenses, tariffs, or quotas on over 10,000 products imported by Mexico, and the average tariff has plummeted from 47 percent to 9 percent.
In actuality, NAFTA--and the proposed extension to the entirety of Ibero-America, and from there to the rest of the Third World--is the economic centerpiece of Bush's much-trumpeted "new world order". In conjunction with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which will codify such free market policies on a global scale, NAFTA's objective is to give a new lease on life to the bankrupt Anglo-American financial system, which has dominated the world economy since World War II. It is intended to do this in three principal ways:
1) NAFTA and its sequels are designed to bolster the shaky, overexteneded international credit pyramid by vastly increasing and solidifying the flow of Third World debt payments to the international banks. It will do this by thoroughly absorbing the economies of the nations of Ibero-America into an extended dollar zone, annexing their raw materials (such as oil), and using their labor forces as captive cheap labor in runaway shops, principally for production for export back into the U.S.
Along with this projected new looting of Third World economies, NAFTA will also reorganize the entire Ibero-American banking structure, and thereby create the conditions under which the vast financial flows originating in the Ibero-American drug trade can be more readily laundered into the cash-strapped Anglo-American banking system.
As one perceptive United Auto Workers official put it: "NAFTA isn't free trade. It's protectionism for the bankers."
2) NAFTA will be the wedge used to dramatically lower wage levels and working conditions in the U.S.A., especially among the shrinking percentage of the U.S. labor force still employed in manufacturing. In fact, an overall restructuring of the U.S. economy is intended, as explained in other Journals. The process of lowering incomes, of degrading jobs, is a prime product of going from economy, into a slave-labor economy.
3) The newly formed Western Hemisphere free trade zone, this bankers' common market, will then be used as a battering ram against the industrial development of Japan and Germany, in particular, to make sure that no alternative to Anglo-American economic predominance emerges anywhere on the international scene. With the Soviet Union enmired in its own difficulties--or so the theory goes-- [H: and don't' you believe it for even a minute!] and with European and Japanese competition eliminated, and with America's vast military might being wielded to bomb any recalcitrant opponents back into the Stone Age, as occurred in the war against Iraq, the Anglo-American establishment hopes to reign unchallenged for the indefinite future.
Such is the Brave New World envisioned by Bush and his sponsors, a modern parody of the decadent Roman Empire of 2000 year ago. The U.S. President, during a December 1990 five-nation tour of Ibero-America, explained: "I truly believe we are approaching a new dawn in the New World."
AUSCHWITZ ON THE BORDER
What will happen if Bush has his way, and NAFTA and GATT are implemented?
First, propping up the bankrupt Bretton Woods [H: Federal Reserve, Incorporated] financial system through further looting of Ibero-America and the Third World, will create conditions of immiseration so drastic that wave upon wave of epidemic disease, and outright starvation, will sweep the developing sector, and will quickly spread to the U.S. itself. The current cholera epidemic striking South America is a first result of these same looting policies, and there is a strong probability that it will soon reach Mexico, and from there spread into the U.S. NAFTA will be largely responsible, because it will promote the growth of the notorious maquiladora belt in northern Mexico, the so-called "in-bond" assembly plants which produce for re-export to the U.S. and make use of cheap Mexican labor (including child labor), as workers are forced to live and work in subhuman conditions. Average wages are 98 cents an hour, compared to the average in U.S. manufacturing wage of nearly $11 today. The fact is that NAFTA will help turn the entire border area into an Auschwitz slave-labor camp.
Second, underselling Germany and Japan, by using runaway sweatshop labor in Mexico, will create both a sharp rise in unemployment in the United States, and a dramatic drop in U.S. real wages, perhaps by as much as one-third in the manufacturing sector. This will not make America more "competitive": It will destroy the very high-technology/high-productivity emphasis which once made the U.S. competitive.
Third, if the Anglo-Americans succeed in destroying the economic potential of Germany and Japan, the irony is that this very result will condemn the U.S. to destruction as well. The U.S. economy has been so damaged by 25 years of Anglo-American policies, that it is today incapable of generating a sustained recovery without the help of the productive capabilities of Germany and Japan. Only a dramatic mobilization of Europe's economic potential, in particular of the sort envisioned in the "Productive Triangle" proposal, can transform the world economic environment in a way that will permit the United States to be rescued from the disaster that three decades of rotten policies have produced.
And yet the Bush administration's explicit policy is to destroy this German and Japanese potential, through NAFTA and GATT.
There is an additional strategic danger involved. The only hope for positive change in the Soviet Union lies in "Westernizing" it by linking it into high rates of economic growth in the industrial West. If Bush succeeds in wrecking the economic capabilities of Germany and Japan, the Soviet Union will have no interlocutors, and it is likely that a desperate, half-starving Soviet Union will strike out aggressively, militarily, against the West.
Such will be the consequences of implementing NAFTA and GATT. The White House has launched a full-scale public relations drive to sell the marvels of NAFTA to the American population. We document here, that each of the claims projected are patently false.
Myth #1: NAFTA MEANS MORE JOBS FOR AMERICANS.
The assertion here is that U.S. exports to Mexico will increase sharply under NAFTA--by as much as $14 billion, according to Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher. Since each $1 billion in exports translates into 25,000 jobs for U.S. workers, he claims, NAFTA means millions of new jobs for America.
Fact: NAFTA means fewer jobs for Americans. Vastly cheaper wage rates mean that U.S. runaway shops will flee to the maquiladora zone, which will soon be extended to encompass the entire nation of Mexico. As for an export boom to Mexico, it won't happen. The market for exported U.S. consumer goods is limited by the terrible poverty of the majority of the Mexican population. And the IMF and Mexico's creditor banks will NOT PERMIT IT anyway: They are demanding that Mexico export more and import LESS, in order to pay off their gigantic debt to the banks.
Myth #2: NAFTA will make the U.S. competitive once again with Germany and Japan, by reducing the labor component of manufacturing costs.
Fact: There is no doubt that the wage bill in maquiladoras on the Mexican side of the border will be far lower than in the U.S. today. But this will destroy the U.S. economy, and in particular the educational and technological training that comes with a higher standard of living, which are the true sources of productivity and competitiveness.
Myth #3: NAFTA will create millions of new jobs in Mexico and thus help stem the tide of illegal migration across the border into the United States.
Fact: NAFTA will mean a net destruction of jobs in Mexico. Domestic manufacturing will be wiped out by the dumping of cheaper U.S. imports on the market. The only jobs that will be created will be those in the expanding maquiladora zone, under conditions so horrendous that "Auschwitz" is the only word that properly describes them. This will foster the very conditions driving desperate Mexicans across the border looking for jobs in the U.S.
Myth #4: NAFTA means the U.S. investment will pour into Mexico, and help Mexico develop. The Bush administration is projecting rates of $5 billion per year and higher.
Fact: Under NAFTA, most of the "investment" that will go into Mexico will be to take over existing plant and equipment. It is a transfer of ownership into the hands of foreigners, not the creation of new wealth.
Myth #5: NAFTA will open up the Mexican banking and financial sector and modernize it. This will attract vast flows of international finance capital.
Fact: NAFTA's banking takeover will open up the banking system of the Americas to all sorts of speculative hot money flows--including those of the drug trade. Such activity does not aid production; it destroys it.
END QUOTE.
Dharma, this has been too long a session, so allow us a break. Let us finish this Express this afternoon and then we can return to Sananda and continue his WORD. Thank you. Hatonn to stand-by.
Source: PHOENIX JOURNAL EXPRESS, June1991, Volume 13, Number 11, Pages 4-7.
http://www.phoenixarchives.com/express/1991/0691/13-11.pdf
Transcribed into HTML format by R. Montana.