El Acuerdo De Libre Comercio Mexico-Estados Unidos
This excellent study by the Centro de Investigacion para el Desarrollo is broad-gauged but at the same time quite detailed in making the case that a free trade agreement with the United States would strengthen the Mexican economy. The authors believe the agreement would enhance recent reforms and help get rid of traditional narrow nationalism and excessive government intervention. Above all they see it as essential to equipping Mexico to live in an internationalized world economy. They take the challenging view that although a "silent integration" of Mexico and the United States has been going on for some time, a formal and thoroughgoing agreement would prove to be, as their subtitle puts it, "a road to strengthen sovereignty."
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The debt containment policy conceived in 1982, under which repayments were financed by the creation of trade surpluses, has run its course. The question now is not only whether the big debtors will pay, but where the money will come from. There is an urgent need for innovative financial mechanisms. The new strategy should include economic reform in debtor countries, new capital in-flows and, if necessary, workable formulae for interest deferral.
Mexico has suffered through four major crises in the past two decades, but the current round, triggered by the 1994 collapse of the peso, is the most serious. Although Mexico will avoid a social explosion, it will not embark on the thorough reform it desperately needs. The reason: a large, broad minority that depends on the United States and is mainly indifferent to their country's ups and downs, economic and political. Successive American bailouts have spared Mexicans some pain but have also locked in misguided policies and an authoritarian government. Until bold new leaders arise, Mexico is condemned to repeat its sad history.
U.S. and Mexican policymakers are rushing to resolve long-standing immigration problems. Guest worker programs are on the table, but the negotiators show a troublesome myopia about the programs' implications. The supposed economic benefits of such programs may prove illusory, and the "guests" may in fact come to stay.
