Nov. 2 was the Day of the Dead in Mexico, a celebration of life and its tragicomic interrelationship with death. There's a special bread that's baked for the occasion, pan de muertos, in the shape of a skull and bones, a special bright yellow flower laid on graves, cempasuchitl, and short, usually funny, poems written and recited, called calaveras.
Nowhere among the multitude of graves spread across this big country was there even one this year marked "NAFTA," so I am told, though it can hardly be said that the Mexican populace is happy in the aftermath of the country's worst economic crisis since 1982. In fact, in a recent poll conducted in Mexico City, 79% of the respondents said Mexico is on the wrong economic track. While not specifically targeted in the questioning, no doubt, the North American Free Trade Agreement played a part in that rather overwhelming negative view.
NAFTA doesn't do too well on this side of the border either. In a Times poll conducted last year, people were split on the question of whether NAFTA has been good or bad for the United States. Were I to have been asked at the time, I would have voted with those who opted for "mixed," for the following reasons.
First, the agreement has been in effect only three years. Its implementation is phased over 15 years. Second, other events have confounded the picture, in particular, the devaluation of the Mexican peso in December 1994, the severe recession that followed and continuing issues with Mexico's transition to real democracy.
U.S. exports to Mexico took a nose dive in 1995 as a result, but rebounded in 1996 and are on the same growth now as they were pre-devaluation. U.S. imports from Mexico currently are running about $10 billion ahead of exports, about the same trade gap that existed in 1995 and 1996. Textile/apparel imports, in particular, are surging at unprecedented rates of increase. Mexico is fast replacing Asia as America's tailor.
Interestingly and perhaps ironically, the apparel industry in Orange County also grew substantially over the past five years. This parallel development is supported by immigrant labor (not necessarily all from Mexico) earning the U.S. minimum wage and exists despite the lure of lower labor costs in Mexico.
