Rural Mexico braces for flood of U.S. farm imports

Date: Sunday, December 29, 2002 11:43 PM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

Well....we can thank NAFTA once again. This time its going to be a new
hoardes of poor Mexican peasants flooding across the border illegally into the
U.S. in search of survival. More downward pressure on U.S. wages for
low-skill jobs, more indirect subsidies for employers (who pay little or no
benefits and low wages to these workers) in the form of increased taxpayer
dollars for social programs and for our already over-stressed infrastucture
(schools, roads, water, sewage, electricity, etc...). No wonder Vicente Fox
wants to erase the border. And no wonder U.S. business interests want to
bring back
the "guest worker" program. A businessperson's Nirvana -- an unlimited
supply of cheap, subservient labor right here in our own country!

(Commentary and article provided by Brian, a subscriber to this newsletter.
Brian makes a very good point. A large part of our illegal alien problem
with Mexico was caused by NAFTA.)

http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/3557257.html

Rural Mexico braces for flood of U.S. farm imports
Ginger Thompson
New York Times
Published 12/29/2002

IRAPUATO, MEXICO -- A decade of hemispheric economic upheaval finally turned
Eugenio Guerrero's life upside down on a recent Saturday. That morning he
tried to auction off the pig farm that has supported his family and about 50
others for two generations.

"It's true," read a flier that announced the sale. "We are closing and
auctioning everything."

>From now on Guerrero, 41, will dedicate himself to selling paint.

The changes he has been forced to confront are being felt all over Mexico as
the country struggles to keep its balance, one foot in poverty, the other
seeking a toehold in prosperity through the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA).

Guerrero said he had barely been able to keep afloat since the treaty began
abolishing trade barriers between Mexico, the United States and Canada
nearly 10 years ago. Credit ran dry after a national economic crisis
devastated banks in 1995. The Mexican government ended most agricultural
subsidies, sending his costs through the roof. Pork prices plunged as
cheaper imports from the United States flooded Mexican markets.

Now, Guerrero's last defense is being dismantled. Under NAFTA, on Jan. 1,
2003 -- less than a week from now -- tariffs on almost all U.S. agricultural
imports will end.

The looming date has consumed the attention of a nation where a quarter of
the population lives in rural areas. It has produced warnings of possible
unrest and increased migration across the Mexican countryside and into the
United States as millions of peasants are forced to abandon their tiny
fields.

In recent weeks hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers and their
supporters have blocked highways and border crossings. They have temporarily
shut down gas and electricity installations, and they even have burst into
Congress on horseback.

President Vicente Fox's government is short of cash and has offered little
more than moral support. "In the world today, all sectors have to adapt to
the new competitive conditions," Fox said. "Agriculture cannot be the
exception."

Guerrero said he accepted the survival-of-the-fittest laws of free trade.
"But Mexico entered the free trade game with serious disadvantages," he
added. "Naturally, we are the losers."

It was widely predicted before NAFTA took effect Jan. 1, 1994, that free
trade would create a new world of economic winners and losers. Mexico has
become the world's ninth largest economy and a powerhouse in the export of
manufactured goods. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were created, most of them
in assembly plants called maquiladoras.

Food imports from the United States have doubled, from $3.6 billion a year
to $7.4 billion. But the food trade also has boomed in the opposite
direction.

Exports to the United States, mostly products made by large Mexican and
transnational food processing corporations, have increased from $2.7 billion
to nearly $5.3 billion. Among the most notable winners are companies such as
Grupo Bimbo, Mexico's largest food company, which has taken advantage of
cheap grain imports.

Fruit and vegetable farmers, who benefit from longer seasons of sunshine and
cheaper labor than their U.S. competitors, have also increased their exports
to the United States under NAFTA.

But many observers say the losses outweigh the gains. Mexico's most
difficult NAFTA challenge has been the fate of about 25 million people who
live in the countryside.

Although agriculture represents less than 5 percent of the gross domestic
product, about one in five working Mexicans are directly involved in it. The
majority are poor subsistence farmers, who work plots as small as two acres.
But midsized farmers also are being devastated. Poultry farmers, too, are
expected to be hit hard when remaining tariffs are lifted next week.
Currently Mexico places a 48 percent tariff on poultry.

© Copyright 2002 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

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