Re: Henwood: Collapse in Cancun

["David Schanoes" <Schanoes@xxxxxxx>]

There must be two different FAO's out there, because the one I'm using
shows a gain in gross output for the earlier 6 year period, exceeding
the gain in gross output for the 1995-2000 period in the categories I
posted.

You state: "NAFTA was, first and foremost, a way to lock up the
reforms, to turn them into an constitutionally-insured international
agreement so that they could not be easily reversed.  It was key to
attract FDI -- just the hint that Mexico was willing to pursue the NAFTA
negotiations multiplied the flows of FDI into Mexico"   And I agree
totally with that.  It formalized certain changes long underway in
Mexico.  And as such clearly NAFTA cannot be analyzed as a "sole
influence."

But then you reverse course and state: "The sole impact of NAFTA
(isolated from the overall impact of the reforms) on Mexico's economic
performance was not that big."   But if NAFTA cannot be analyzed
separate and apart from the reforms and the FDI flows, then we can't
describe its sole impact as minimal.  We wouldn't describe the impact of
the FDI flows as minimal, and we agree that NAFTA was the visa given to
foregin direct investment.

And indeed the whole point about the collapse of Cancun is precisely
that it is part of the whole point -- of the declining profitability for
capitalism in general, the restrictions to free trade imposed BY the
advanced on the less developed capitals, not vice versa as  Hug Dimwood
suggests.

To say the impact on NAFTA is not great on the US economy misses the
point.  It's like saying the impact of agriculture, agricultural
exports, is not great on the US economy since it engages only 2.8% of
the population, accounts for a small portion of GDP, and a small portion
of total US exports.  But anything, taken in isolation, might not have a
big impact on an $9 trillion dollar economy.

We could say that FDI flows to Mexico from the US haven't had that
great an impact on the US since they are exceed by such flows to the
advanced countries of Europe, to China-- and prove that by showing how
China has eclipsed Mexico as the second largest exporter to US; that
Canada is the largest exporter to the US....

But, as I like to tell myself, size isn't everything-- it's movement,
acceleration, velocity, rates that count.

The issue, at Cancun, at everywhere, is what is the economic impact of
the bourgeois order's trade arrangements?  Do those arrangements offer
relief to less developed countries, particularly during a period of
declining profit and economic contraction?  Or do those trade
arrangements, of which the WTO itself is a living example, work to
magnify the transfer of profit from the less developed to the developed
areas of capitalism?  The answer is clear enough--  the WTO itself, its
Singapore issues, etc. is the mechanism for opening, widening, the
blades of the scissors that keeps the develping countries in crisis.


dms


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