NAFTA update possible with right approach, Mexican official says

NAFTA update possible with right approach, Mexican official says Mexico is open to collaborating with Canada and the United States to improve the North American Free Trade Agreement, but any attempt to renegotiate the treaty could lead to its demise, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States said.
   During the presidential campaign Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama said they wanted to use opt-out clauses to pressure both countries to add environmental and labor standards to the pact. Obama has since toned down talk of withdrawing from NAFTA in favor of mutual efforts to correct portions of the treaty.
   Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan said in an Oct. 22 interview with the Houston Chronicle that renegotiating NAFTA would undermine the competitiveness of the continent. Any U.S. attempts to redo the deal would likely lead Canada and Mexico to seek revisions to other parts of the pact.
   “The probable end-game of that is going to be the meltdown of what we’ve built over these 15 years,” he said. “I would say that if the idea is to strengthen NAFTA, to ensure that NAFTA is providing these three countries with a platform with which we can continue growing and competing, I think Mexico would be willing to sit down.”
   During the last presidential debate at Hofstra University on Oct. 15, Sens. Obama and John McCain sparred over free trade. Obama said he wanted to go to bat for American businesses and workers by creating a level playing field in terms of trade.
   “I believe in free trade, but I also believe that for far too long, certainly during the course of the Bush administration, with the support of Sen. McCain, the attitude has been that any trade agreement is a good trade agreement. And NAFTA didn’t have enforceable labor and environmental agreements.
   “And what I said was we should include those and make them enforceable in the same way we should enforce rules against China manipulating its currency to make our exports more expensive and their exports to us cheaper.”
   Obama also criticized a pending free trade agreement with South Korea for not correcting an imbalance that results in hundreds of thousands of South Korean auto imports when U.S. automakers can only get 4,000 to 5,000 cars into the Asian nation.
   “That’s not free trade. We’ve got to have a president who is going to be advocating on behalf of American businesses and American workers, and I make no apologies for that,” he said.
   McCain chided Obama for not supporting approval of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, saying that U.S. export potential there is constrained because of high duties that cost millions of dollars per year while Colombian goods can enter the U.S. duty free.
   Obama said the Colombian deal has environmental and labor protections similar to the Peru Free Trade Agreement that he supported, but that the South American government needs to do a better job of stopping assassinations of labor organizers before it can gain extra trade privileges.
   “We’ve got to have a president who understands the benefits of free trade, but also is going to enforce unfair trade agreements, and is going to stand up to other countries,” he said.
   “I don’t think there’s any doubt that Sen. Obama wants to restrict trade and wants to raise taxes. And the last president who tried that was Herbert Hoover,” McCain responded. ' Eric Kulisch