[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 68 (Thursday, May 26, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: May 26, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
THE NORTH AMERICAN COMMUNITY
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HON. BILL RICHARDSON
of new mexico
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, May 25, 1994
Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct my colleague's
attention to the attached excerpts from an article by Alan K. Henrikson
on the North American Free-Trade Agreement. In matters of trade and
North America, Mr. Henrikson is a visionary. Mr. Henrikson's ``A North
American Community: `From the Yukon to the Yucatan''' transcends the
domestic squabbles, the trinational deal making, and the heated
politics associated with NAFTA's inception, negotiation, and passage of
this historic agreement. Henrikson appropriately concludes that trade
agreements are meaningless if there is not a corresponding sense of
common purpose and community among the signatory countries. NAFTA like
agreements will meet with tremendous success if the commitment of
nations participating in that pact fully develop the ties that bring us
together. I urge my colleagues to examine the important work that
follows.
A North American Community: ``From the Yukon to the Yucatan''
(By Alan K. Henrikson)
During 1991, President George Bush joined the president of
Mexico, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and the prime minister of
Canada, Brian Mulroney, in initiating a complex process
designed to bring about a North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) on the continent. The idea was described variously by
commentators as leading to a worldwide ``strategic alliance''
among the three partners, a business-based ``North America
Inc.'' to compete with the European Community and Japan, and
even an economic ``Fortress North America.''
That the NAFTA scheme did implicitly threaten a new
regional trade bloc, on the basis of which the United States,
Mexico, and Canada could bargain collectively with Europe and
Japan, is unmistakable. It clearly had coercive connotations
as well as more constructive intent. US State Department
Counselor Robert Zoellick, while denying that NAFTA would
contribute to ``the promotion of regional blocks,'' stressed
that a NAFTA arrangement would ``strengthen the hand'' of the
country's foreign economic policy. ``The signal the United
States wants to send the world,'' he stated, ``is that we are
committed to opening markets and that we will extend a hand
to others who share that commitment''--and not, he seemed to
imply, to others.
In August 1992, the continental free-trade negotiations
were successfully concluded with congressional action
expected in 1993. By negotiating a free market with both
Canada and Mexico, the US government demonstrated that it had
not abandoned ``its leadership role'' in the field of
trade, thus answering critics who wondered if the ``new
world order'' outlined by President Bush had a place for
economics.
Apart from international power connotations, the NAFTA
project, though focused on economics, seemed to prefigure
what could be characterized as a ``North American
community''--that is, a new and positive identity shared by
the peoples of the three North American countries. For the
first time in their histories, Mexicans, Americans, and
Canadians could come to feel that they had more in common
with each other, despite cultural and other differences, than
with any nonneighbor outside the hemisphere--notably their
parent societies in Europe where a new identity also is
rapidly forming. A NAFTA particularly could contribute to
overcoming the estrangement between the Hispanic and
norteamericano peoples in the New World. A greater inclusion
of the continent's widespread, increasingly self-aware native
groups--the continent's ``first nations''--into a feeling of
North American community, or family of peoples, also might
result.
The notion of a North American community implicitly
challenges the politically established concept of a ``North
Atlantic community,'' informally built around the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It is not today widely
remembered that the first suggestion of a ``NAFTA,'' dating
from the early 1960s, was for a North Atlantic Free Trade
Agreement. This transatlantic NAFTA would have joined Canada
and the United States with the United Kingdom, and perhaps
other members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA),
formed in 1960 in part in reaction to the 1957 Treaty of Rome
establishing the European Community (EC) on the European
continent. Today's concept of a westward-oriented NAFTA is
similarly, though less intentionally, an alternative to the
larger ``Pacific Basin community'' concept. Some thought was
given during the 1980s in the United States to concluding a
free-trade pact with Japan.
Today's North American Free Trade Agreement is premised on
the formal fact and the economic ``success'' of the 1988
bilateral US-Canada Free Trade Agreement (USCFTA), which went
into effect at the beginning of 1989. A further, trilateral
pact, to include Mexico, could have competed with the USCFTA,
complemented it, or completed it. The Canadian government had
to decide what position to adopt toward, and what part to
play in, trade talks between the United States and Mexico.
Whatever the form of a new continentwide trading
relationship, a NAFTA was sure to do more than merely include
a further economic partner with its own resources and needs.
A three-way North American continental trade bond has
ideological and even geopolitical significance.
``Right now,'' as President Bush stated in April 1991 to a
group of Hispanic-American businesspeople at a meeting in
Houston, ``we have the chance to expand opportunity and
economic growth from the Yukon to the Yucatan. Think of it:
The North American Free Trade Agreement would link us with
our largest trading partner, Canada, and our third-largest
partner, Mexico. It would create the largest, richest trade
zone on earth--360 million consumers in a market that
generates $6 trillion in output a year.'' Observing that
there are some doubters who seem to ``oppose letting our
neighbors enjoy the benefits of progress,'' the president
said pointedly: ``Ask them what is wrong with increased
productivity throughout the continent. And ask them what's
wrong with a more stable Mexico.''
The NAFTA will be good for the entire neighborhood. ``A
unified North American market would let each of our countries
build on our strengths,'' the president said. ``It would
provide more and better jobs for US workers. It would
stimulate price competition, lower consumer prices, improve
product quality. The agreement would make necessities such as
food and clothing more affordable and more available to our
poorest citizens. It would raise productivity and produce a
higher standard of living throughout the continent.'' Both
America's neighbors, Mexico perhaps even more than Canada,
would share in this overall progress. ``A free trade pact
would encourage investment, create jobs, lift wages, and give
talented Mexican citizens opportunities they don't enjoy
today.'' The development would have much larger,
international importance: ``A strong Mexico, in turn, means a
stronger United States and a stronger North American
alliance.''
One can see in President Bush's concept of a Mexican-
American-Canadian ``alliance,'' though ostensibly a political
concept, a broader community ideal--a notion of bringing
together North American's nations on a basis of moral parity.
The differences between the United States and both Canada and
Mexico are, of course, vast. A decade ago, these were cited
as reasons, among others, why a tripartite commonwealth would
never work.
Indeed, the disparity between the United States and the
others in economic strength and demographic size cannot be
ignored. The Canadian economy, heavily resource-dependent
though its industry is fairly modern, is one-tenth the size
of the US economy. Canada's population of 26.6 million is
about the same fraction of that of the United States with its
250 million people. The Mexican economy, although its
population is sizable and growing (86.2 million and soon
to reach 100 million), is barely more than one twenty-
fifth the size of that of the United States.
Besides the obvious problem of finding a way to balance
these three unequally weighted countries in a North American
negotiation, there is the related problem, hardly less
difficult, of overcoming the deep-seated alienation between
Americans and their neighbors, especially those to the south.
Historical tensions that have existed between US citizens and
their culturally nearer cousins to the north must also be
overcome. And between Mexicans and Canadians (viewed from a
southern perspective as ``gringos from the far north''), a
lack of mutual knowledge--a veritable cultural void--has long
prevailed. A bond must be formed where virtually none has
ever existed, either positive or negative. The long-term
success or failure of even a limited free-trade agreement
among the three may well depend on whether the process
engenders a harmonious feeling of a shared social identify.
Conclusion
Despite opposition that has slowed the development of a
North American political consensus on NAFTA, if no
necessarily the actual NAFTA negotiations, an agreement has
been concluded and must now be signed, drafted into legal
form, and submitted to the legislatures in the three
countries. So great are the historic forces moving these
three economies toward some form of integration that it is
difficult to imagine the NAFTA process ending in failure. The
momentum began in 1979 and 1980, gained in 1983 and 1985,
accelerated with the USCFTA in 1988, shifted direction with
Mexico's decision to negotiate in 1990, and broadened in
force with Canada's entry into trilateral talks in 1991.
Enthusiasm seemed to decline somewhat in early 1992, but
officials pressed ahead and were able to announce the
conclusion of negotiations in August 1992.
After formal submission, Congress has ninety working days--
which could stretch out as long as eight months--in which to
approve the agreement, without amending it. Assuming that the
necessary implementing legislation is promptly submitted, one
could imagine fairly expeditious consideration by Congress.
Approval, however, will not take place without committee
hearings and a full debate. The upshot could be a delay of
congressional consent until sometime in 1993. By that point,
a change of government in both Canada and the United States
might have occurred, complicating but probably not wholly
confusing the transnational politics of NAFTA approval.
The attitude of Canada's Parliaments as well as the Mexican
Congress toward trilateral North American trade, though the
agreement surely will be criticized in those bodies, should
follow the policies of Canada's and Mexico's leaders.
Opposition in both countries--in the business community and
labor unions as well as political circles--should be reduced
somewhat by the North American dispute-settlement mechanism,
including the Trade Commission. Experience with the USCFTA,
however, has shown that providing adjudicative measures for
trade relations does not end the task of diplomacy, which now
involves peoples as well as governments. Both old and new
diplomacy are needed to form a trinational consensus, such as
Governors Reagan and Brown and others imagined in 1979 and
1980. A sense of North American community must be engendered.
Without it, a North American market, no matter how well
negotiated, cannot truly thrive.
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