Photos Octavio Ruiz More from MPR Main story: Minnesota-Mexico trade still short of potential Direct investment: The other kind of trade Your Voice Join the conversation with other MPR listeners in the News Forum.

	E-mail this page			Print this page

"Fair trade" proponents see the dark side of trade
by Jeff Horwich, Minnesota Public Radio
June 18, 2004

Octavio Ruiz leads the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition, based in Minneapolis. He says "the human rights of workers from either side are being undermined" by NAFTA and the effects of free trade between the U.S. and Mexico. (MPR Photo/Jeff Horwich)

While companies and state officials discuss growing trade in positive terms, others see the free flow of goods and dollars between the U.S. and Mexico as a disaster for both sides.

Minneapolis, Minn. — Today the North American Free Trade Agreement is an afterthought for many businesses, who now take for granted the open markets it created 10 years ago. But for activists like Octavio Ruiz, NAFTA remains a critical turning point. Ruiz is the director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition, a group of more than 70 Minnesota labor, environmental, social justice, and family farm organizations.

"The numbers show (NAFTA) has been pretty much a failure, not just for Minnesota but for all the states in the union," Ruiz says.

We're glad (President Fox) is visiting, but he should be aware that what is happening here is a direct result of the policies of the Mexican government. - Octavio Ruiz

The numbers Ruiz cites include 766,000 lost jobs in the U.S. since NAFTA went into effect, and the closure of 28,000 Mexican small businesses because of U.S. corporate competition.

Proponents of free trade counter that both economies have grown through trade, more than making up for the jobs lost along the way.

Ruiz says the ostensible reason for the visit to the Twin Cities of Mexican President Vicente Fox -- namely, the growing number of Mexican nationals now living in the upper Midwest -- is itself a direct and troubling result of free trade with the U.S.

He uses corn, a Minnesota export, as an example.

"We in the United States can produce far cheaper corn," Ruiz says. "So now Mexico, traditionally a corn producer, has to import. And that has devastated the farmers there."

Ruiz says many farmers headed to the border to find work in maquilladoras, the many manufacturing plants that sprung up in the wake of NAFTA. The working conditions and pay in the maquilla sector have been the subject of much controversy in the years since NAFTA.

And in recent years, the maquilladoras themselves have suffered closures. Ruiz says 280,000 such jobs have been lost as global companies pulled up stakes in northern Mexico, seeking cheaper labor in China. Unlike the U.S., Ruiz says Mexico does not offer education, retraining and other adjustment assistance to workers displaced by trade.

"So what do you do?" Ruiz says. "You cross the border and look for work somewhere else. And you have the results: We're here."

With regard to President Fox, Ruiz says, "We're glad he's visiting, but he should be aware that what is happening here is a direct result of the policies of the Mexican government."

News Headlines

Related Subjects