Is it NAFTA that is bad or the movement of US companies out of country?

[Bandit]

I think Free trade is good. By that I mean buy goods produced in another country by that counties citizens. What I find abominable is US Companies moving out of the US to avoid paying taxes and environmental laws. I find nothing wrong with US citizens being able to buy jewelery from Bangkok made by Thai people or Persian Rugs from Iraq made by Iraqis or Sombreros made by Mexicans. It is companies like General Motors opening a company in Mexico for the cheap labor and no environmental standards and no Taxation. Yet they claim the mantal of US Company and expect the US Government to protect them and give them tax incentives although they no longer support American workers or American taxation. These are the companies that should be labeled as un-American and have any and all privileges revoked and tarrifs put on their goods. I'm sorry but America should come first and profit second. They would never be where there are today without the American infrastructure and protections. It is their turn to be Patriotic and support America.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

1. NAFTA and trade are not the problem.

The problem is that we are defining "trade" as the exporting of
jobs. "Trade" has nothing to do with exporting jobs, it has to
do with exporting and importing goods.

The companies are to blame for this.

[camero]

2. I just had this debate the other day

I agree that it is the outsourcing of jobs that is the cause of all the trouble. I think that we should be punishing companies and not countries. The old ways of tariffs and economic sanctions do not work anymore and only cause more suffering.

Taxing the practice would put a big dent in the outsourcing of jobs.
If they make thier money in America then thier obligation is to America.

[wryter2000]

3. Thanks for asking, Bandit

I was wondering the same thing. Do these companies really need free trade agreements to ship jobs overseas? I don't see why they would.

[anti-NAFTA]

4. NAFTA and trade are bad for domestic manufacturing

because countries involved in multilateral trade agreements are not all on the same playing field. See my thread about Kerry and NAFTA.

[BillZBubb]

5. Free trade is as bad a laissez faire capitalism

Both are based on unrealistic and naive assumptions about the world. They are right wing fantasies.

Your comments seem contradictory. First you say free trade is good, then you blast companies for taking advantage of a free trade agreement. NAFTA allows (even encourages) companies to open subsidiaries in Mexico. They can't get tariffs placed on their goods, because that would violate the treaty.

If you don't like that fact, then NAFTA is to blame. NAFTA doesn't contain adequate labor and environmental protections. Nor does any free trade agreement we've got.

A company will always put profit first, if its management wants to keep their jobs. That is to be expected. It is the responsibility of the government to make sure that jobs are protected, or at least it should be.

We do not need free trade which is essentially a race to the lowest wage levels and weakest government protections for workers and the environment in all countries.

We need fair trade that adjusts for differences in wage levels, relative costs of living, and legal constraints on production (ie environmental, safety, and taxation).

[TreasonousBastard]

6. There's a problem with defintions.

Free trade, fair trade, domestic trade, globalization, multinational...

Everyone uses these and so many other terms for their own purposes without really understanding what's behind it all.

Trade is essentially good. "International" traders have been around since the Phoenicians, and probably a lot longer than that. Trade brings in new goods, expands markets for existing goods, and is fundamental to every form of economic activity we've been living with for thousands of years.

Even the stone age tribes trade with each other when they are not killing each other off-- they are simply not as efficient at it.

Like any other activity, however, there are downsides. Wars were fought over the Spice Routes, Britain used the concept of comparative advantage to create colonies simply to provide its factories with cotton, tin, sugar cane...

Over the years, vast numbers of treaties, tariffs, agreements, international laws and conventions... have been drawn up to protect various nations' interests. Some are protectionist, some try to balance the interests and breach protectionism. Protectionism has rarely worked, and has often caused many more problems for the protectionist countries than freer trade has.

Where we are now is a place we have never been before. Transportation, communications, energy, capital, resources, and labor are so efficiently moved that we don't need steel mills by rivers or textile mills by waterfalls any more. We don't need factories near consumers, or keypunch operators in cities.

Only a few things are left in the old comparative advantage equations-- we still can't grow oranges in Minnesota. Yet.

The simple truth is that with or without any of these new treaties, companies are going to do what they think they do best-- get the highest return on capital. Long before NAFTA, much production had been going to Mexico. Every single Trojan condom and auto wiring harness has been hecho in Mexico since the 70's, maybe earlier.

One of NAFTA's main points was to reduce Mexico's tariffs on OUR goods, and to attempt to regulate the massive amount of outsourcing that had ALREADY been going on. It also held some hope for setting up North America as a trading bloc to compete Japan's sphere of influence and the EU.

Same thing with the WTO, G7, and all the rest. Rest assured that the existence of the WTO has little to do with making sneakers in China or Thailand. Companies will race to the bottom for low capital or wage zones as fast as they can get there no matter what organizations are around. My new Nikon camera was actually made in Thailand, btw. It's not just us heading for the bottom.

There are many problems with these organizations, just as there are many problems domestically all over the world, but that doesn't mean that they are in themselves the bad guys. They, or similar organizations, offer the only hope that we can somehow manage all of this.

It's only through international organizations that we can attempt to get fair labor standards, environmental standards, and all the rest of the stuff we think would be a good idea. It's also international organizations that oversee the dumping, subsidy and other provisions which already try to protect everyone from unfair trading practices.

Bilateral agreements really can't work any more. They weren't all that hot in the past, but the incredibly efficient moving of everything now pretty much destroys any of the few good effects of bilateralism.

It's all about internationalism, and perhaps a few major trading blocs. No one has much of an answer just how we can deal with it, but we do have to deal with it.

That these organizations have yet to show their promise doesn't mean that they should be abandoned.

[Hippo_Tron]

7. Except for the fact that it's much easier to export labor...

Than it is to get foreign goods through customs or shipped overseas. If everybody bought all their products from the countries that our labor is exported to then NAFTA and the WTO would be gone in five minutes.