expanding NAFTA:
The expansion of NAFTA into the Security and Prosperity Partnership reveals the road ahead for other nations entering into free trade agreements. It is not a road most nations -- or the U.S. public -- would take if they knew where it led.
(...) The first problem is that very few people know about this next step of "deep integration." In March 2005, Presidents George Bush, Vicente Fox and Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas launched the Security and Prosperity Partnership with a splash. ... These rules and trinational programs have profound effect on the environment, the daily lives of citizens, and the future of all three countries.
(...) Its security component represents a new and ominous form of integration, all in the name of counter-terrorism.
(...) The official U.S. web page describes the SPP as "a White House-led initiative among the United States and the two nations it borders - Canada and Mexico - to increase security and to enhance prosperity among the three countries through greater cooperation."
(...) "White House-led" is a key element.
(...) Many of the priorities of the SPP benefit only a small handful of powerful actors, such as greater patent protection (Mexico holds very few patents) and joint anti-piracy campaigns (piracy is a major employer in Mexico and benefits low-income consumers).
(...) SPP on the other hand, was born in the "global war on terror" era and reflects an inordinate emphasis on U.S. security as interpreted by the Department of Homeland Security. The head of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Mexico's Secretary of Finance Carlos Gutierrez, represent the three ministries charged with attending SPP ministerial conferences.
(...) The SPP measures to coordinate security have pressured Mexico to militarize its southern border and adopt repressive measures toward Central and South Americans presumably in transit to the United States. The false conflation of undocumented immigration with security in the United States has also led to measures that have little to do with Mexico's own national security and cause friction with friendly nations, such as the decision to require visas for citizens of Brazil and Ecuador to enter the country.
(...) Moreover, in all three countries, significant civil society movements have questioned whether the high-tech solutions advanced by Homeland Security (and that profit major military suppliers) are really the best and most resource-efficient answer to security challenges. Again, for the most part, the decisions are being made without public knowledge or consultation.
(...) Economic integration under NAFTA has led to job loss and the erosion of job security and quality in the United States, while also increasing unemployment in Mexico. Over thirteen years, the model has confirmed, rather than reversed, Mexico's status as the less-developed partner. The rise in immigration to the United States attests to the failure of NAFTA as a development mechanism. Moreover, it has not increased the U.S. competitive edge although it has delivered record profits to a few major global traders. Unfortunately for the majority, those "few" are now driving the efforts to deepen integration under the NAFTA-plus-Homeland-Security model.
(...) But to deepen integration would mean deepening the contradictions and the problems that have led most Americans to express their rejection of the free-trade model in recent polls, and that has spurred widespread public protest in Mexico and Canada.