Talk:North American Free Trade Agreement

No report on UPS suing Canada about alleged unfair competition with Canada Post? From UPS and others.

As I recall, the Canada-U.S. part of NAFTA started around 1990. 1994 was when Mexico was brought into the mix. Kingturtle 22:42 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Copyright notice from the NAFTA Secretiat site. There was a suggestion on the article page that all the data on that site is free. It is pretty free, but thought I'd put a link to their copyright notice so you can judge, if you wish, if its GFDL compatible. Pete 10:33, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

prescription drugs

U.S. citizens go to canada to buy the same drugs at a cheaper price. And it is considered illegal to do so. But doesn't NAFTA say there is free trade? Kingturtle

NAFTA does not establish absolute free trade, there are many exceptions (health care and culture for example)

04:30, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

And of course anything that the US thinks would put it at a disadvantage, like softwood lumber. DJ Clayworth 14:22, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

NAFTA facts

I'm not sure the best way to incorporate the items in this list into this article. But here are some "facts" I scraped off the net concerning NAFTA.

NAFTA was originally a Republican initiative.
First advanced as an idea by Ronald Reagan in his presidential campaign of 1980.
In one of his last acts as President, Bush (41) signed the completed agreement on December 17, 1992, and forwarded it to Congress, where it awaited the new President.
08 December 1993 President Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law
On November 8, 1994, George W. Bush (43) was elected to the first of his two terms as Governor of Texas. As governor he supported NAFTA. --Buster 07:29, Jul 14, 2004 (UTC)

NAFTA was pushed in with Canada at the height of it's right wing politics with Mulroney and with Reagan, you figure out what the agenda of this damn thing is. Roley

You clearly have no idea what economics are about if you think George W. Bush supports free trade. Conservatives have always been traditionally protectionist and the current American administration is the best example. The problem with NAFTA is not that it's "too much" for free trade, on the contrary it has too many exceptions which are a disadvantage to Mexican producers (e.g. massive agriculture subsidies to benefit American farmers). If you looked around the net with more objective eyes you would see other interesting "facts" like that the current Canadian Liberal governement supports the agreement (it opposed it but changed its mind after seeing the positive effects on employment) as well as most of the provinces, including Quebec which is usually not the first pushing the Republican "agenda".

You clearly missed the implication in the original post that NAFTA was pushed for pro-big-business reasons, which supports your assertion that it fails to promote free trade and contains too many loopholes favourable to the USA. Whether this is true or not, I cannot say, not being an economics major. However, the most vocal Canadian supporters of NAFTA are either Conservatives or in big business, which tends to support that view of what its role is in trade. — Saxifrage | ☎

Someone should add something about the controversial chapter 11 of nafta. --63.206.119.217 01:04, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

GDP

2003, PPP $12.532 trillion, currency $12.500 trillion. - Jerryseinfeld 19:25, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"NAFTA Plus / The Future"

I'm removing this section. "NAFTA Plus" is a proposition of Mexico's President Vicente Fox that has limited support in the USA and virtually none in Canada. [1], [2], [3]

(IMHO, there's actually negative support for it in Canada, which has always been wary of becoming the "51st state" of the USA.) AS IT SHOULD BE!!!!

Not only that, but the text is a copyvio [4] of an article in The National Post of Canada, which is a notably right-wing newspaper. (The original article is no longer online.)

Perhaps a total rewrite is in order (I notice there is a better-written version in History, but it's still factually incorrect) that would explain Fox' take on this. However, this suggestion of his about NAFTA is a non-event except for the political and public reaction to his audacity in suggesting it without consulting the rest of NAFTA. So, not being encyclopedic at all, I think removal is best. — Saxifrage | ☎ 07:07, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

Is in order a rewrite of NAFTA plus and it is a fact, im sorry for your leftish sentiments but what i posted is true, obviously you didnt read gthe original article that it was much more complete than my summarize.

Is a fact, there is a group of prominent politicians from the 3 countries that this year on june will present the complete text for a NAFTA plus and it has the support of the governments of the 3 countries, even when there are people that is not agree. (unsigned, but by Kardrak)

If it's a fact, then provide uncontenstable source(s) that show it's a fact. If you can't produce evidence for a controversial claim, it does not belong on Wikipedia, according to policy. Further, the text you inserted is copyright the National Post, and as such it is impermissible for Wikipedia to publish it.

On another note, in case you were unaware, I'd like to inform you that it's bad form to remove other people's comments from any Talk page. Please avoid doing so in the future. — Saxifrage | ☎ 00:10, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

Wrong information about EU

Laws of the European Union are not "superior to national laws". That would imply the existence of a superstate, engulfing all the participating nations, which has always been peremptorily denied by EU authorities. EU laws do require from its members certain adjustments that, in order to be met, ultimately affect national legislature, but failure to comply with EU regulations is "illegal" only within the sphere of influence of the EU itself, meaning that a "rogue member" might be quicked out of the group, but could not be forced to comply (as an example: we citizens of various countries live under the "empire of the law" - our respective national laws - and the law determines rules that outway our wills. So, for instance, no one can choose whether to pay their taxes or not, the will of the law outways our own. That does not happen when sovereign countries are concerned.). Any "superiority" of EU legislation would have to be decided on a country-to-country basis, by the respective national law, which makes the latter ultimately superior, since it is given to each country the creation of, and changing, said national law (if EU regulations were to forbid such alteration, that would not prevent any willing country from altering its laws, although this hypothetical country could loose its membership over this issue - but the national law would eventually prevail). Regards, Redux 01:04, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The above is actually not true. Britain at least has written into its own laws that they cannot conflict with EU laws. DJ Clayworth 14:20, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Missing citation

The article currently includes: "One controversial aspect of NAFTA is that Canada is required to periodically purchase weapons and military equipment from the US for its military."

Either I've never heard of this controversy, it's not a controversy, or this sentence is factually incorrect. The only hint that Canada might be "required" to purchase arms from the US is references to a document called the Defence Development and Production Sharing Arrangements (DDPSA), of which I can't find a text online, but which is certainly not NAFTA. Unless someone can find a citation, I'm going to remove it as unsubstantiated.

I added the statement. This is what i heard, I was hoping someone could verify it. 209.148.144.117 05:29, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Recent major edits

Two problems with recent major changes to the article, to be specific, the sections on SPP, Common Security, and Common Prosperity:

The Common Prosperity and Security sections are directly copied from the press release. [5]
None of these sections are about NAFTA.

As such, I am immediately removing the sections titled Common Security and Common Prosperity. If there is no consensus here to keep the section on SPP, I will remove it to a new article linked from "See also". — Saxifrage | ☎ 23:28, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

My mistake, they're all copyvios. The SPP section was written by an Associated Press reporter according to the byline on this article. I've removed it as well. The original editor is free to start a non-copyvio article about SPP in its own article, I suppose. — Saxifrage | ☎ 23:34, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

POV

212.32.73.87's major edits have effectively hijacked the entire controversy section into a pro-globalization argument. The user seems to rely entirely on Establishment sources, for instance stating that "While critics of NAFTA have tended to point to alleged detrimental effects on the Mexican economy, the vast majority of those critics reside in the United States or Canada. In Mexico itself, both the long-time PRI government of Salinas, and the opposition led by present President Vincente Fox, have been strong supporters." This is to assume that because two wealthy political parties are in favor of something, everyone in the country must be. In general he tends to overemphasize Establishment economists and discredit everyone else. I don't even know where to start in fixing this. Sarge Baldy 22:17, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

I'm tempted to revert the whole lot of it as uncited original research. The amount of weasel words is astounding. I'm sure 87 doesn't realise that it fails basic Wikipedia standards as they are an IP. Just because someone writes a lot doesn't mean they have more of a voice in consensus. Does anyone have any contentions with a blanket reversion? — Saxifrage | ☎ 22:00, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't disagree. If there was anything valuable in the changes made, they were completely overshadowed by the complete butchering of any semblance of neutrality in the article. In matters as sensitive as this, it's absolutely nuts to rewrite the entire thing to entirely reflect one's own controversial perspective. Sarge Baldy 23:21, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and done so, so as to keep people from simply building off the weaselly strand. Sarge Baldy 22:26, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

The Passage of NAFTA

NAFTA side negotiations were agreed to in late summer of 1993, then NAFTA was voted on by the house of rep and the senate (as per Title 19 U.S.C. Chapter 17 Section 2903)in November of 1993. It become officially active on January 1, 1994.

NAFTA, good for Mexicans or not ?!?

On the Mexico page, they say that the wages in Mexico have grown since 1995 due to NAFTA (and mexican economy got stronger),while this page says the contrary.What am I missing ? Stefan Udrea 12:20, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Probably the other page is weighing economic "progress" differently. Poverty has been sharply increasing in Mexico since NAFTA, evidenced by the increased flocking of Mexicans into the United States. If you weigh mean wages instead of median though, you get a different picture, since the wealthy may disproportionately benefit enough to offset lowered wages elsewhere (whereas measuring the median you find out what the average individual earns). So to answer your question, I would reply that it's very good for some Mexicans but fairly bad for the majority. Sarge Baldy 20:47, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

"Arguments against this... In reality..." paragraph

The following appears in the article from a recent edit by 64.157.32.1 (talk · contribs):

Arguements against this are that NAFTA is blamed for a number of Mexican ills, including labor union and agricultural decline, immigration, and the Zapatista rebellion. In reality, PRI-controlled labor unions were already a source of frustration, and prior agricultural changes in 1992 are a better place to look for agricultural decline and subsequent migration to Mexican cities and the US border. The Zapatista rebellion was unrelated to NAFTA, which had not had time to make any lasting impact when the rebellion began. The illegal immigration was more a product of high birth rates than lay-offs.

This sounds like spoon feeding, apologist POV, and original research to me. However, because I do have an anti-globalisation bias, I don't want to revert this outright. Rather, what does everyone else think? Certainly the wording and lack of citations are terrible, but is there anything that can be taken out of this to improve the article? — Saxifrage | ☎ 20:44, August 6, 2005 (UTC)

Since no-one has objected for ten days, I've removed the passage as POV and unsourced. — Saxifrage | ☎ 05:57, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

-In Mexico the NAFTA or TLCAN has a nice appreciation by mexicans, but at the end, it only make the rich people richer and poor people miserably and it's clear that is not USA fault, but Mexico government of the time