It's not just Democrats who want a time out. Six in 10 Republican voters said that free trade had hurt the U.S. and that they would support tougher import restrictions, according to a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll in October.
"We're seeing the strongest opposition to free trade expansion in recent memory," said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, a Washington-based business group that promotes open markets in the Western Hemisphere. "NAFTA has become symbolic of the fears and apprehensions of globalization in general."
Despite promises that NAFTA would help keep Mexicans at home, illegal immigration to the U.S. has accelerated. About two-thirds of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States have arrived since 1995, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Many hail from rural Mexico -- casualties, critics say, of a trade deal that pitted highly subsidized U.S. and Canadian agribusiness against Mexican producers working tiny plots.
"The dimensions of the problem are finally becoming obvious," said Raul Fernandez, a professor of Chicano and Latino studies at UC Irvine. "Policymakers in the United States realize they have created a monster, and that monster is devouring them."
Free trade agreements have been the centerpiece of the Bush administration's relations with Latin America, where the U.S. has long promoted democracy, privatization and open markets as the prescription for the region's woes. Free market advocates are concerned that rising U.S. protectionism will signal a retreat from these principles just as Washington is losing influence to populists such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Despite strong economic growth in much of Latin America in recent years, trust in market economics is declining, according to a poll released in November by Latinobarametro, a Chilean opinion research firm. Millions are frustrated that privatization and falling trade barriers have done little to mitigate income inequality.
Survey respondents in Central America were particularly downbeat, despite that region's recent embrace of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which includes the U.S., the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
In a separate 2007 opinion poll, Mexicans said they disapproved of NAFTA by 2 to 1, according to the Mexico City-based polling firm Mund Americas. That's an about-face from 10 years ago, when Mexicans favored the deal by a similar ratio.
