Dan Shoom, Kingston IS, Five Part Series on NAFTA

Part 4
------
Confusion is an understandable response for anyone who followed the
debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the
United States. While the pro-NAFTA side was a virtual who's who of
the American ruling class, the opposition was an odd assortment of
labour and environmentalists plus populist, xenophobic
right-wingers.

The so-called export of American jobs to Mexico was the main reason
for the AFL-CIO, the American trade union federation, to oppose
NAFTA. Fear of losing one's job is widespread today in the U.S.,
just as in Canada. This fear can be directed towards a fight
against our bosses, right-wing politicians, and their corporate
agenda. But it can also be directed towards a racist anti-immigrant
sentiment, and blaming Mexicans, Japanese and other foreigners for
'stealing our jobs'.

Opposition to NAFTA included both sentiments. Both were present, in
fact, within organized labour. Solidarity with Mexican workers, and
anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican racism were common at anti-NAFTA
events organized by American unions.

Ross Perot, a right-wing populist, picked up on this racist
sentiment when he spoke of a "great sucking sound" of American jobs
being sucked into Mexico. He tried to shift anti-NAFTA sentiment
into an America-first direction. His United We Stand America
organization is also presently campaigning for "immigration reform"
in Texas, and they don't mean opening borders.

Perot's nationalism and implied racism became explicit with Patrick
Buchanan. Sara Diamond, in Z Magazine, writes "Buchanan's
anti-NAFTA writings employ left-sounding terms to make a case for
xenophobia. He charges a "ruling class," "power elite" and
"corporate elites" with using NAFTA to break down national
boundaries, thereby blurring distinctions between cultures."

While the threat of job loss is very real, jobs will be lost in all
three countries. Mexican farmers and steel workers, for example,
will be put out of work as American exports to Mexico increase with
the dropping of trade barriers. Yet no one speaks of the sucking
sound of these jobs leaving Mexico.

That NAFTA is a threat to workers in all three countries is being
realized by a growing internationalist section of the NAFTA
opposition.

National coalitions of NAFTA's foes now regularly hold
'tri-national' meetings. However, groups like the Action Canada
Network, the Fair Trade Campaign, and Red Mexicana de Accion Frente
al Libre Comercio (Mexican Action Network on Free Trade) see their
struggles as aimed at preserving the powers of national governments
to regulate business for the good of their communities. Maude
Barlow, national chair of the Council of Canadians, calls this
'internationalist nationalism'.

Socialists should applaud this growing awareness of the need to
struggle internationally. We should, nevertheless, work to build a
true internationalism which sees the struggles as the same. This
minority sentiment can be heard in this quote from Larry Weiss, a
organizer for the Fair Trade Campaign in Minnesota who has spoken
to dozens of union meeting about NAFTA: "I expected that someplace
along the line in these meetings I was going to get some sort of
racist reaction about 'these damn Mexicans taking our jobs. But
I've never heard any of that. Instead, there was this astounding,
immediate affinity - a recognition that the material conditions of
these people in other countries are directly related to our own
conditions and that unless theirs is brought up, ours will continue
to decline."

For socialists it is this internationalist sentiment that we should
relate to and foster. But we should be as critical of
anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican racism as we are of NAFTA, itself.