Key NAFTA 10th Anniversary Reports

In the last six months, there has been a flood of analytical reports and policy briefs regarding the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the three countries of North America. Here are some of the most notable publications.

— "NAFTA’s Promise and Reality: Lessons from Mexico for the Hemisphere;" John J. Audley, Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Sandra Polaski and Scott Vaunghan; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, November 2003; available at: www.ceip.org/pubs

— "North or South, Benefits of NAFTA Add up To Nada;" David Bacon; Los Angeles Times, December 7, 2003; available at: www.latimes.com

— "NAFTA’s Legacy — profits and poverty;" David Bacon; San Francisco Chronicle, January 14, 2004; available at: www.sfgate.com

— "The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border;" David Bacon; book from the University of California Press, March 2004; available at: www.ucpress.edu

— "NAFTA: Ten years of Cross-Border Dialogue;" David Brooks and Jonathan Fox; Americas Program, Interhemispheric Resource Center, March 2004; available at: www.americaspolicy.org

— "NAFTA’s Labor Side Agreement: Fading Into Oblivion? An Assessment of Workplace Health & Safety Cases;" Linda Delp, Marisol Arriagua, Guadalupe Palma, Haydee Urita and Abel Valenzuela; UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, March 2004; available from Linda Delp at: ldelp@ucla.edu

— "Report Finds Few Benefits for Mexico in NAFTA;" Celia W. Dugger; New York Times, November 19, 2003; available at: www.nytimes.com

— "How NAFTA Failed Mexico;" Jeff Faux; The America Prospect, Volume 14, Issue 7, July 3, 2003; available at www.tap.org

— "NAFTA at 10: Where Do We Go From Here?;" Jeff Faux; The Nation, February 2, 2004; available at: www.thenation.com

— "International Trade: Mexico’s Maquiladora Decline Affects U.S.-Mexico Border Communities and Trade; Recovery Depends in Part on Mexico’s Actions;" General Accounting Office, Report #03-891, July 2003; available at: www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-891

— "Lessons from NAFTA: The High Cost of Free Trade;" Hemispheric Social Alliance- Common Frontiers, Alliance for Responsible Trade, Mexican Action Network on Free Trade, published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, November 2003; available at: www.policyalternatives.ca

— "North American Labor Under NAFTA;" Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Regional Jones, Jeffrey J. Schoot, Diana Orejas and Ben Goodrich; Institute for International Economics; available at: www.iie.org

— "Trading Away Rights: The Unfilled Promises of NAFTA’s Labor Side Agreement;" Human Rights Watch, Volume 13, No. 2(B), April 2001; available at: www.hrw.org

— "NAFTA — 10 Years Later;" large series of articles posted on the website of Inter-Press Service (IPS) on a wide range of subjects; available at: www.ips.com

— "Trade Brings Riches, But Not to Mexico’s Poor; NAFTA"s critics say pact has failed to improved lives of impoverished majority;" Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan; Washington Post, March 22, 2003; available at: www.washingtonpost.com

— "Lessons from NAFTA for Latin American and Caribbean Countries: A Summary of Research Findings;" Daniel Lederman, William F. Maloney and Luis Serven; The World Bank, December 2003; available at: www.worldbank.org/laceonomist

— "Sovereignty and Maquiladoras;" Mercedes Gema Lopez Limon, Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC); Mexican Labor News & Analysis, March 2004; available at: www.ueinternational.org

— "Seven Myths About NAFTA and Three lessons for Latin America;" Alejandro Nadal, Francisco Aguayo and Marcos Chavez; Americas Program, Interhemispheric Resource Center, November 2003; available at: www.americaspolicy.org

— "The Ten Year Track Record of the North America Free Trade Agreement," extensive series of reports by Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch; available at: www.tradewatch.org

— "The High Price of ‘Free’ Trade: NAFTA’s failure has cost the United States jobs across the nation;" Robert E. Scott; Economic Policy Institute, November 2003; available at: http://epinet.org

— "The Broken Promise of NAFTA;" Joseph E. Stiglitz; New York Times, January 6, 2004; available at: www.nytimes.com

— Free Trade Accord at 10: Growing Pains are Clear;" Tim Weiner, New York Times, December 27, 2003; available at: www.nytimes.com

— "Two Steps Forward, One Step Back — Or Vice Versa: Labor Rights Under Free Trade Agreements from NAFTA, Through Jordan, via Chile, to Latin America, and Beyond;" Marley Weiss, University of San Francisco Law Review, Vol. 37, No. 689 (2003).

— "NAFTA’s Untold Stories: Mexico’s Grassroots Response to North American Integration;" Timothy A. Wise; Americas Program, Interhemispheric Resource Center, June 2003; available at: www.americaspolicy.org

— "NAFTA, Foreign Direct Investment, and Sustainable Industrial Development in Mexico;" Lyuba Zarsky and Kevin P. Gallagher; Americas Program, Interhemispheric Resource Center, January 2004; available at: www.americaspolicy.org

 

Compiled April 12, 2004.