Reevaluation of Policy
As NAFTA lives on, it is critical to look back and reconsider the free trade policies that have been relentlessly pursued since the Clinton White House and the Democratic Leadership Council took on as their own what essentially was a Republican Party trade posture. The evidence is overwhelming: NAFTA has damaged the manufacturing industry in the U.S. and Mexico. As the maquiladora industry thrives (even in light of recent whittling) and human rights are continuously eroded in sweatshops across the globe, it is the responsibility of the U.S., the world’s most insatiable consumer, to call attention to this injustice in the manufacturing sector and correct it through trade policies that affirm human dignity, such as the fair trade movement and regulations created by the U.S. government to monitor whether equitable labor rights are being respected, as well as under what conditions foreign goods and services are being imported into this country. Furthermore, the labor movement that helped make the U.S. into the economic superpower it is today must be allowed to function without intimidation or manipulation. Free trade agreements which spawn sweatshops and undermine the autonomous status of laborers the world over, and compromise future trade pacts, must make a greater effort to benefit all citizens, not just the corporate and banking sectors which normally are the primary beneficiaries of the U.S. economic order.
