{"id":38025,"date":"2014-07-21T14:21:24","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T14:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/organicconsumers.org\/?p=38025"},"modified":"2014-07-21T14:21:24","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T14:21:24","slug":"article_30521","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/organicconsumers.org\/article_30521\/","title":{"rendered":"NAFTA Advocates Continue to Make Misleading Claims"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">For related articles and information, please visit OCA&#8217;s <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/organicconsumers.org\/corplink.cfm\" rel=\"noopener\">Politics and Democracy page<\/a>.<\/span><br \/><a target=\"_BLANK\" href=\"\/sites\/default\/files\/artman2\/uploads\/1\/1994_resist.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\"><br \/>\n\t<img class=\"lazyload\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"357\" height=\"185\" border=\"0\" align=\"\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27357%27%20height%3D%27185%27%20viewBox%3D%270%200%20357%20185%27%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%27357%27%20height%3D%27185%27%20fill-opacity%3D%220%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" data-orig-src=\"https:\/\/organicconsumers.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/1994_resist.jpg\" alt=\"\" style=\"margin: 10px;\"><\/a><br \/>\nA protestor at Peace Arch Park opposes the U.S.-led Trans Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP), which has been called &#8220;NAFTA on steroids.&#8221; (Photo: flickr\/cc\/Caelie_Frampton)\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>In an effort to defend NAFTA and promote similar agreements, the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) &#8211; Washington&#8217;s most influential think tank on international economic policy &#8211; had a full <a href=\"http:\/\/www.piie.com\/events\/event_detail.cfm?EventID=341\">day of events<\/a> yesterday. The program highlighted one of their recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.piie.com\/publications\/pb\/pb14-13.pdf\">publications [pdf]<\/a>, which seeks &#8220;not to rehash old claims that may have been overstated but to clear the air so that the benefits and challenges of trade can be examined in an objective light.&#8221; In spite of this disclaimer, the authors grossly overstated the benefits of NAFTA for Mexico, and put forward a number of misleading claims, including a particularly egregious bait-and-switch used to justify a rant against the economic policies of the &#8220;Andean-3&#8221; aka Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. It is a good example of how ideology can trump facts when it comes to commercial agreements made in Washington.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this year, CEPR published a paper giving an overview of the Mexican economy in the NAFTA era (&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cepr.net\/index.php\/publications\/reports\/nafta-20-years\">Did NAFTA Help Mexico? An Assessment After 20 Years<\/a>&#8220;), so I will focus here on the claims made about Mexico by the PIIE economists. In terms of their bottom line for Mexico, the authors&#8217; findings concur with our conclusions. They say that &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.piie.com\/publications\/pb\/pb14-13.pdf\">Mexican growth in the NAFTA era has been disappointing<\/a>.&#8221; But they also argue that without NAFTA Mexico&#8217;s economy would be $170 billion smaller. In other words, they attribute half of Mexico&#8217;s (per capita) growth rate to trade in goods and services stimulated by NAFTA (see table below.) Given Mexico&#8217;s population (about 118 million), this amounts to a payoff of $1,441 per person, or about $4 per day. In a country where over <a href=\"http:\/\/sedlac.econo.unlp.edu.ar\/eng\/statistics.php\">27 percent<\/a> of the population lives on less than $4 a day &#8211; in rural areas it is over <a href=\"http:\/\/sedlac.econo.unlp.edu.ar\/eng\/statistics.php\">48 percent<\/a> of the population &#8211; this would be very significant. In reality, results such as these are produced by <a href=\"http:\/\/rodrik.typepad.com\/dani_rodriks_weblog\/2007\/05\/the_globalizati.html\">economic models that are highly sensitive to parameters which the researchers themselves determine<\/a>, so it is easy to end up with results that corroborate one&#8217;s worldview.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an effort to defend NAFTA and promote similar agreements, the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) &#8211; Washington&#8217;s most influential think tank on international economic policy &#8211; had a full day of events yesterday. The program&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38023,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[80,9],"organicbytes":[],"countries":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>NAFTA Advocates Continue to Make Misleading Claims - Organic Consumers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/organicconsumers.org\/article_30521\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NAFTA Advocates Continue to Make Misleading Claims - Organic Consumers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In an effort to defend NAFTA and promote similar agreements, the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) - Washington&#039;s most influential think tank on international economic policy - had a full day of events yesterday. 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