And with Mexican labor productivity in tradeables about 1/3 that of the U.S., has created 2,298,000 job opportunities in Mexico?
>
>In Mexico, large trade surpluses with the United States have not been enough
>to overcome even larger trade deficits with the rest of the world. Wages and
>incomes in Mexico fell between 1991 and 1998; and with NAFTA, inequality has
>grown and job quality has deteriorated for most workers, according to
>Mexican author Carlos Salas.
Naughty naughty!
Keep your counterfactuals straight! You can't say that NAFTA was bad for the U.S. because demand for labor would have boomed even more without it and also say that NAFTA was bad for Mexico because demand for labor didn't keep up with the rapidly-growing labor force.
My no-Nafta counterfactual has U.S. wages a hair higher, U.S. employment the same, U.S. real interest rates higher and growth slower by perhaps two hairs. It also has Mexican wages falling faster in the 1990s than they did, and Mexican unemployment rising sharply.
>- Since NAFTA took effect on January 1, 1994, exports to Mexico have grown
>by 147 percent and exports to Canada have grown by 66 percent. But imports
>from Mexico have grown much faster, by 248 percent; and imports from Canada
>have grown by 79 percent.
How horrible that those Mexicans have to work to make all those products that they export to the United States! How much better off all those Mexicans would be if imports from Mexico had not grown at all!
May I make one more fruitless plea for somebody, somewhere to raise the level of the debate?
Brad DeLong