The Crumbling Case for NAFTA

A Democratic member of Congress recently asked me over to his office to discuss the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). I explained why I thought it was a bad idea. The three members of his staff who were there agreed with me. The congressman frowned. “Well,” he said, “You may be right about the economics, but we have to do something for [Mexican president] Salinas, don’t we?”

From the time that the idea of a North American Free Trade Agreement between Mexico, Canada, and the United States was first seriously put forward by George Bush and his corporate allies, the Washington policy and media elite assumed that the economic case for the agreement was solid. Free trade is one of the mos...