Q&A: Economist Gerardo Esquivel says full benefits of NAFTA elude Mexico

World News Report: Next week, the George W. Bush Institute, the public policy arm of the former president’s library in Dallas, will launch a North America Scorecard with an assessment that the North American Free Trade Agreement has been a boon to the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Gerardo Esquivel offers up a slightly different point of view, specifically that Mexico has not done as well as the other nations.

Democrats Step Up Efforts to Block Obama’s Trade Agenda

ED: This article is important to Mexico as well. As a member of the TPP, Mexico would automatically face the NAFTA-plus or what I have called the NAFTA plus PEMEX scenario of job loss and displacement and massive resource grabs. Obama who ran in 2008 on a platform criticizing NAFTA has become progressives worst enemy on trade issues today. He is now clashing with th Democratic Party over whether to allow the anti-democratic fast track to finish the TPP.

New York Times: President Obama is facing opposition from fellow Democrats to one of his top priorities: winning the power to negotiate international trade agreements and speed them through Congress.

As Mr. Obama’s team works privately to line up support for the so-called trade promotion authority, a coalition of Democratic lawmakers and activists from organized labor, environmental, religious and civil rights groups is stepping up efforts to stop him. Read more. 

Oil: The Great Pitfall

La Jornada 

By John Saxe - Fernández

Americas Program Original Translation 

Diego Valadés, of the Institute of Legal Research of the UNAM, warned the Senate about the risk involved in opening Pemex when Mexico is part of NAFTA and could be forced to give preferential contracts to companies (U.S.), or risk involvement in an international controversy if they refuse. The matter takes on unusual importance and urgency if we consider that since October 2012 Mexico has been negotiating their participation in the Trans-Pacifc Partnership Agreement (TPP) which, according to leaked documents, grants rights and privileges to corporations in investment, land, natural resources, and industries in order to disable state enterprises, with the intention to reverse the vast and dynamic geo-economic and political projection of the Chinese state sector.

The notion of renegotiating the Mexico’s petro-electric clause in NAFTA protected by Articles 27 and 28 of the Constitution, had been placed in Peña Nieto’s agenda by John D. Negroponte ( JDN ), U.S. ambassador during the negotiation of NAFTA and former director of the National Intelligence Council , governing body of imperial espionage . In October 2010 Negroponte said from Toluca that it was time to seek new ways of working through the negotiation of a second phase (NAFTA) and that the... delicate matter ... needed to be put on the table. He was referring to the energy sector, a key card in the presidential succession processes for plundering the nation. EPN came to Los Pinos at the culmination of the intentional weakening of Pemex started in 1983, so that by the end of 2011 and to the delight of the White House and the greats (ExxonMobil, Chevron, etc.) during their U.S. tour, offered to open the energy sector, endorsing U.S. business design and national security.

The Free-Trade Charade

NOTE: In the Americas Program we have been involved in analyzing and monitoring the impact of free trade agreements since the negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the early nineties, and the movements against imposing a global corporate agenda in the World Trade Organization--a battle largely won. Now the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) threatens to impose that agenda on a huge swath of the world, including Mexico. 

In this editorial, Nobel Laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz explains why this would be such a giant step backwards, especially for developing countries. We have to ask ourselves, why do the leaders of these countries--including Mexico, which requested incorporation in advanced negotiations where it did not even participate--agree to conditions that put them at a disadvantage in meeting their basic obligations to their people? The answer is unfortunately fairly clear: the leaders represent the interests of a narrow, now transnational, elite and what happens to the majority does not overly concern them. This is why citizens are organizing against the TPP. One of the biggest problems, as Stiglitz points out, is the U.S. government. The terms it imposes in the agreement and, as he puts it, its "commitment to a lack of transparency" has shrouded the whole deal in secrecy and made open debate and opposition nearly impossible. To find out more about the opposition in your area, contact: http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/ .  Ed. Laura Carlsen

Project Syndicate. By Joseph E. Stiglitz. Though nothing has come of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Development Round of global trade negotiations since they were launched almost a dozen years ago, another round of talks is in the works. But this time the negotiations will not be held on a global, multilateral basis; rather, two huge regional agreements – one transpacific, and the other transatlantic – are to be negotiated. Are the coming talks likely to be more successful?

The Doha Round was torpedoed by the United States’ refusal to eliminate agricultural subsidies – a sine qua non for any true development round, given that 70% of those in the developing world depend on agriculture directly or indirectly. The US position was truly breathtaking, given that the WTO had already judged that America’s cotton subsidies – paid to fewer than 25,000 rich farmers – were illegal. America’s response was to bribe Brazil, which had brought the complaint, not to pursue the matter further, leaving in the lurch millions of poor cotton farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and India, who suffer from depressed prices because of America’s largesse to its wealthy farmers. Read More...

Democratic Revolt Against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Fast Track

The Americas MexicoBlog and Americas Updater has been following TPP negotiations, what it means for Latin America and anti-TPP organizing closely, after twenty years of looking at the disastrous results of NAFTA. This is encouraging news, sent by the Citizens Trade Campaign. Obama's nominee for US Trade Representative, Michael Froman--a typical product of the revolving door between private companies and the government agencies charged with overseeing them for the public good--is a former investment manager at Citigroup and has been accused of tax avoidance. 

No doubt about it, the 2008 candidate Obama who promised to renegotiate NAFTA and design trade deals to promote decent jobs and relief for small businesses has vanished into thin air. Now it's up to citizen, labor and environmental groups to find allies in and  outside Congress to stop the spread of these job-killing Free Trade Agreements. And it looks like they're making some headway. But one of the big problems we have as progressive policy analysts, is finding out what is in the TPP. Government negotiaters not only think they can deal away our interests, but they think they can do it while keeping us uninformed and silenced. If anyone has any new inside information on the negotiations and the current draft, please send it on. info@cipamericas.org

Over Two-Thirds of Democratic House Freshmen Tell Party Leadership They Oppose Transferring Their Constitutional Trade Authority to the President

Washington, DC — More than two-thirds of Democratic freshmen in the U.S. House of Representatives expressed serious reservations today about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (TPP FTA) negotiations and the prospect of delegating Fast Track "trade promotion authority" to the President.  They voiced their concerns in a letter sent to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Ranking Ways and Means Member Sander Levin that was spearheaded by Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan and signed by 35 other House freshmen.  

"The administration has yet to release draft texts after more than three years of negotiations, and the few TPP FTA texts that have leaked reveal serious problems," the letter reads.  "Thus, we are especially concerned about any action that would transfer Congress's exclusive Constitutional trade authority to the president."

The TPP is poised to become the largest Free Trade Agreement in U.S. history.  The twelve countries currently involved — the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam — already cover approximately 40% of the global economy, and the TPP also includes a "docking mechanism" that could enable other countries to join over time.  The TPP's seventeenth major round of negotiations concluded in Lima, Peru last month, and negotiators are racing to complete their work by an October deadline set by President Barack Obama and others.  

Under Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress possesses exclusive authority to determine the terms of international trade agreements, but the Obama administration wants Congress to transfer that authority to the executive through a new delegation of Fast Track "trade promotion authority."  The President's nominee for U.S. Trade Representative, Michael Froman, reiterated that request during his Senate confirmation hearing last Thursday.  

Fast Track delegates Congress' constitutional trade authority to the executive branch, allowing negotiators to determine the contents of trade agreement and to sign them before Congress has a vote on the matter.  The rarely-used procedure also allows trade agreements to circumvent ordinary Congressional review, with the White House writing lengthy implementing legislation that is not amendable in committee or on the floor and must be voted on within 90 days of submission, leaving Congress with only take-it-or-leave-it approval of a completed package that, in the case of the TPP, is expected to be at least hundreds of pages long and cover some 29 separate chapters, affecting everything from food safety standards and medicine patents to energy regulations and public procurement decisions.  

"It's encouraging that so many new Members of Congress recognize the problems inherent with Fast Track, and are demanding a more meaningful role in trade policymaking for themselves and their constituents," said Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of Citizens Trade Campaign.  "Congressman Pocan and these other freshmen have demonstrated a real commitment to creating fair trade agreements that promote job creation and economic prosperity.  That type of leadership is desperately needed if we're going to stop letting big corporations ship our jobs overseas and dump our wages and benefits overboard along the way."

A copy of the letter and its signatories follows:

The Honorable Sander M. Levin

Ranking Member

Ways and Means Committee

1106 Longworth House Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20515

Cc: The Honorable Nancy Pelosi

Dear Ranking Member Levin:

We look forward to working with you to establish United States trade policies that promote the creation of American jobs and support our national economic interests while safeguarding Congress’s prerogatives to determine what domestic policies best promote the public interest.

As the economy continues to recover from the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, we can all agree that we cannot afford to have American production and American jobs sent offshore because of unfair trade agreements that undermine our economic growth. When jobs and production factories are offshored, American wages are lost, American-made products decline, and our international interests are compromised.

Job offshoring was a major issue in the previous election that unites our constituents - Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike. Polling consistently shows that Americans oppose our past model of “trade” agreements that facilitate offshoring, undermine Buy American policies, and subject American laws to review by foreign tribunals empowered to order payment of unlimited U.S. tax dollars to foreign firms that seek to avoid playing by the same rules as U.S. firms.

Thus, we write with serious concerns about both the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (TPP FTA) now being negotiated by the Obama administration and the prospect of Congress delegating wide swaths of its Constitutional authority to regulate trade (Article 1, Section 8) to the president through “Fast Track”  or any other open-ended delegation of “trade promotion” authority.

In the last Congress, two-thirds of House Democrats joined together on a letter to President Obama demanding access to the draft TPP FTA texts and raising concerns about how the pact could internationally preempt Congress’s domestic policymaking prerogatives. They wrote:

“Since the United States will be obliged to bring existing and future U.S. policies into compliance with the norms established in the TPP FTA, the negotiations USTR is pursuing will create binding policies on future Congresses in numerous areas. These could include those related to labor, patent and copyright, land use, food, agriculture and product standards, natural resources, the environment, professional licensing, state-owned enterprises and government procurement policies, as well as financial, healthcare, energy, telecommunications and other service sector regulations.”

Unfortunately, today TPP FTA talks continue in extreme secrecy. The administration has yet to release draft texts after more than three years of negotiations, and the few TPP FTA texts that have leaked reveal serious problems. Thus, we are especially concerned about any action that would transfer Congress’s exclusive constitutional trade authority to the president.

Congress needs to work together to get American trade policy back on track - not give away its authority to do so.  Reducing our authority to ensure our trade agreements serve the public interest will undermine our efforts to create American jobs and to reform a misguided trade policy that has devastated our manufacturing base through the offshoring of American production and American jobs.

Indeed, given the vast scope of today’s “trade” agreements, we do not believe that a broad delegation of Congress’s constitutional trade authority is generally appropriate. Negotiations on the TPP FTA delve deeply into many non-trade matters under the authority of Congress and state legislatures. If completed, the TPP FTA would lock in policies on these non-trade matters that could not be altered without consent of all other signatory countries. Thus, ensuring Congress has a robust role in the formative aspects of trade agreements is vital.

We are all deeply committed to creating jobs in our communities and across the country. To do so effectively, we believe it is critical that Congress maintains its authority to ensure American trade agreements are a good deal for the American people.

Sincerely,

U.S. Reps. Mark Pocan (WI-02), Ron Barber (AZ-02), Joyce Beatty (OH-03), Ami Bera (CA-07), Julia Brownley (CA-26), Tony Cardenas (CA-29), Matthew A. Cartwright (PA-17), William L. Enyart (IL-12), Bill Foster (IL-11), Lois Frankel (FL-22), Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02), Pete P. Gallego (TX-23), Joe Garcia (FL-26), Alan Grayson (FL-09), Steven A. Horsford (NV-04), Jared Huffman (CA-02), Hakeem S. Jeffries (NY-08), Joseph Kennedy, III (MA-04), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-01), Annie McLane Kuster (NH-02), Alan S. Lowenthal (CA-47), Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM-01), Daniel B. Maffei (NY-24), Patrick Murphy (FL-18), Gloria Negrete McLeod (CA-35) , Richard M. Nolan (MN-08), Beto O’Rourke (TX-16), Donald M. Payne Jr. (NJ-10), Raul Ruiz (CA-36), Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09), Eric Swalwell (CA-15), Mark Takano (CA-41), Dina Titus (NV-01), Juan Vargas (CA-51), and Marc A. Veasey (TX-33)

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Arthur Stamoulis

Citizens Trade Campaign

(202) 494-8826

Mexican Diplomatic Continuity with NAFTA Partners

FSN News: Special Report

January 10, 2013

With little opposition, the Mexican Senate ratified this week the nomination of Eduardo Medina Mora as Mexico’s new ambassador to the United States. In a presentation to the Senate’s foreign affairs commission broadcast on the Congress Channel, Medina sketched out his views on the parameters, problems and promises of the Mexico-U.S. relationship.  A longtime mover and shaker on Mexico´s political scene, Medina touched on immigration, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), migrant remittances, arms trafficking and drug legalization. Notably, he did not speak about outstanding environmental issues between Mexico and the U.S. per se.

“Few problems are as complex in the relations with the U.S. as this one,” Medina said of the immigration question.

According to the lawyer by profession, Mexican diplomats will have to keep careful tabs not only the progress of immigration reform in Washington, but ongoing initiatives at the state level as well. He said cross-border collaborations were needed to improve the repatriation process of Mexican nationals, especially women and children.  In a long-range analysis of migration trends, Medina predicted relatively less of his countrymen (and women) will relocate to the U.S. in the future due to a drop in fertility rates among Mexican women and the looming end of Mexico´s demographic bonus of a young, plentiful labor force.  In Medina´s estimation, however, the U.S. will still need to continue “importing people to keep growing.”

Who Stole Mexico’s Corn — and Jobs?

by Cathryn Wellner - September 10, 2012


As the two presidential candidates square off over immigration reform and Romney touts measures like Arizona’s draconian “papers please” law as models, it might be a good time to examine one of the major reasons for illegal immigration: U.S. trade policy.

People of the Corn

Mexicans have long been the people of the corn. Festivals revolve around maize. A meal without corn is like an Asian meal without rice – incomplete.

With 10,000 years of experience breeding different maize varieties, Mexican farmers know corn. They have developed varieties that are nutritious, flavorful and suited for the country’s many different environments.

Some varieties of maize make better meal for tortillas and tamales. The kernels of others add flavor to salsas and soups. Some are bright yellow, while others are red, blue, orange or multi-colored. Some are short and stubby. Others are long and tapered.

Corn and cultural identity are inseparable for Mexico. A fascinating study published in 2004 even links ethnolinguistic diversity with crop diversity.

Along Came Free Trade

Free trade has had a devastating impact on that culture. First came the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1987. In 1994, Mexico joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The same year it became an equal partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Read more. 

The economics and human costs of migration: violence and healing in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands

The Americas MexicoBlog is pleased to post this guest blog by our contributor, Dave Feldman. Dave has been volunteering on the border and brings us his observations and reflections on migrants along the Arizona-Sonora border and US projects to provide help.

By Dave Feldman
I am not usually one to frequent McDonald’s, but I nonetheless head towards the double golden arches, which seem to cry out: “Welcome to the United States of America.” I am returning to Douglas, Arizona after an afternoon spent at the Migrant Resource Center in the Mexican border town of Agua Prieta, Sonora.

The MRC is a partnership of many different people and organizations, such as the primarily Tucson-based activist aid group No More Deaths—who I am officially volunteering with for the second summer in a row—and the bi-national faith-based Frontera de Cristo, all working together towards the common goal of helping migrants caught in the deadly web of U.S. economic and border policy. We provide food, water, clothing, simple toiletries and basic first aid, and connect folks with other organizations and shelters serving migrants in town. Some have been caught by Border Patrol and deported after walking for as long as eight days in the desert, while others are coming from the south and using the town as a departure point before trying their luck. Raia, a fellow volunteer, had heard that a vigil for those souls whose luck had run out among the cacti and rattlesnakes was going to take place in the McDonald’s parking lot, and so we decide to stop by before heading back to our double-wide trailer in the Hidden Valley Mobile Ranch.

We are met by Mark from Frontera De Cristo, along with a couple of local volunteers and a group of students from Duke—who have arrived with the Tucson-based Border Links—and Stanford. We also spot Kara, a No More Deaths volunteer we met a couple days before at our training session in Tucson. She is based in ambos Nogales—both border towns share the same name—but has just gotten back from a day in the desert near Arivaca, AZ, where No More Deaths maintains a camp and leaves water for the many migrants attempting to cross over to el Norte.

The 100+ degree heat, mountainous terrain and frequent summer monsoons do not make it a logical crossing point along the nearly 2,000 mile-long U.S./Mexico border, but the increased patrolling of urban areas through the construction of a military-style wall and the deployment of heavily armed Border Patrol and National Guard agents has left little choice. The so-called Southwest Border Initiative, first launched by the Clinton Administration in El Paso/Ciudad Juárez in late 1993, is essentially a militarized arm of the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement.

Why Mexico's election doesn't matter to Americans

Global Post: Analysis: The winner of Sunday's Mexican presidential election is unlikely to change course on US trade and the drug war.

Something remarkable happened, or rather, didn’t happen, in the middle of Mexico’s June 10 presidential debate when the three leading candidates were asked to share their views on foreign policy.

Not a single one — not even leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — used the opportunity to question the two pillars of the US-Mexico relationship: free trade and the shared fight against Mexico’s drug cartels. Read more. 

NAFTA: Defending Corn and Culture in Rural Oaxaca

Witness for Peace: "Corn is sacred in Mexico. Indigenous groups, of which there are 16 in Oaxaca, consider corn to be a gift from the gods. It forms the basis of the way they have structured their communities, marked the cycles of the year, and maintained their fundamental connection to the land for thousands of years.

Despite corn’s 8000+ year history of cultivation in Oaxaca, present-day threats could possibly wipe out the traditional, sustainable farming practices used by indigenous farmers in the region.

... For over 18 years now, the North American Free Trade Agreement has lead to the devastation of the Mexican countryside, through removing price supports and credits to small farmers like the ones in Oaxaca. Through subsidies from the U.S. government, large scale agribusinesses can sell their corn below the cost of production, undermining Mexican farmers’ abilities to sell their own crops at a decent price." read more

U.S.-Mexico Relations: We agreed to greater cooperation against crime: Peña Nieto

La Jornada: "PRI presidential candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, said yesterday, after his meeting with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, ....(that) one of the points on which (he) made ​​the greatest emphasis was security, and that he made with Biden "the clear commitment (in case he wins the presidency) to combat organized crime, working in a close and productive collaboration that allows us to deliver results in this area. It is a task and an obligation of the State to do it head on and create conditions of security. And of course we talked about that, to date, the results are poor."

.... At a press conference after the dialogue, the former governor of the state of Mexico said he made ​​it very clear to the Vice President's that "my personal position and that of my party, counter to various speculations that have been made, is that there is an unavoidable task of the Mexican State to combat organized crime more effectively, and that the discussion is not focused on whether or not to fight, but how to achieve better results."

Peña Nieto, who attended the meeting with Biden accompanied by the PRI's national president, Pedro Joaquin Coldwell, and his campaign manager, Luis Videgaray, said that another of the points discussed was the challenge of Mexico's economic growth and creating jobs .

He also spoke of the desirability for both governments, "in the near future of the two administrations, to broaden the relationship between the two countries for greater benefits for our peoples, the opportunity to explore, to go beyond what has been until now a bilateral relationship in commercial terms."

The PRI presidential nominee welcomed, especially Biden's position on the presidential succession in Mexico. "First, he let us know that he had absolute respect for the democratic process that Mexico is living through. Second, his commitment to work with and respect whoever wins this election."

He affirmed that he also shared with Biden his energy project, which includes the probable opening of Petróleos Mexicanos and the necessity in the next six years to look for migration reform." Spanish original

NAFTA vs. Indigenous Mexicans: Hundreds of Mexico’s Huichol Indians trek to their sacred ground seeking to stop silver mine

AP/The Washington Post: "Huichol Indians believe the sun was born in a spot high in the arid Sierra de Catorce mountain range of northern Mexico. For them, that spot — the Cerro del Quemado, or the Burned Mountain — is the center of the universe, a sacred ground. It’s also part of a mining concession Mexico’s government granted to Canada-based First Majestic Silver Corp., and Huichols are fighting to block the project.

More than 600 Huichols wearing colorful clothes with cross-stitch patterns and hats decorated with feathers and beadwork recently made a pilgrimage to the Cerro del Quemado to ask their gods to guide them in keeping the $100 million mining project from starting this year." read more

Laura's Blog: Mexico at the Helm of the G20

In a few days Hillary Clinton will land on the sunny shores of the Mexican Pacific Ocean to take part in an unusual meeting of foreign ministers. Los Cabos is hosting the ministers of G20 countries, plus a few selected guests, as part of the run-up to the G20 summit to be held in the same peninsular beach resort in June. Mexico took over the presidency of the G20 last December.

The meeting is unusual because foreign minister meetings don't normally form part of the Group of 20 process. But the Mexican government seems to have decided on a strategy of multiple and frequent preparatory meetings as the best guarantee for a successful summit--at a time when the odds against that happening are particularly high.

The G20, with 19 countries and the European Union, claims to represent 90% of global GDP, 80% of international global trade and 64% of the world’s population. It started as a meeting of finance ministers talking about global financial governance and economic policy. Then it morphed into an informal organization with presidential participation that grapples with the world's most pressing issues in a 'members-only club' setting.

The foreign ministers are meeting in part because the G20 is experiencing mission creep at precisely the time when it finds it most difficult to deal with the issues it already has. Because of the hermetic nature of the organization, it's hard to say what Clinton will be talking about, and we likely won't have a clear idea even after the joint declarations and photo ops come out. Mexico has promised more civil society participation and public information, but as hundreds of people work on the elaboration of documents and proposals, getting details from the outside has been like pulling teeth.

The Mexican government may be regretting its decision to take over the 2012 presidency. In the past few meetings the G20 has been virtually paralyzed by the European economic crisis--without reaching effective solutions and without being able to deal with other issues. Mexico hoped to have the European crisis, and particularly the Greek situation, resolved before it held the summit. Not only has the crisis continued, but it threatens to flare up again in a big way despite the Grecian parliament's acceptance of a deal.

The road to Los Cabos has been strewn with obstacles for the beleaguered powerhouses of the world. Besides the crisis, the division between developed countries and developing countries, which Mexico claims to represent, has been growing. Before going into the obstacles, it's important to ask: Why is Mexico doing this? What does the Calderon government hope to obtain?

Mexico has laid out five priorities:

1. Economic stabilization and structural reforms as foundations for growth and employment.
2. Strengthening the financial system and fostering financial inclusion to promote economic growth.
3. Improving the International Financial Architecture in an interconnected world.
4. Enhancing food security and addressing the issue of commodity price volatility.
5. Promoting sustainable development, green growth and the fight against climate change.

Since the first priority is practically the sin qua non for the rest, the whole agenda depends on a miracle to a large degree. Calderon stated that the crisis should be resolved before June to make progress on the G20 agenda. His goal is to "resolve the euro crisis, to isolate the effects of the crisis on viable economies, like Italy or Spain and avoid systemic contamination and, of course, to discount the part of the Greek debt that is simply unpayable." Although he offered some specific measures to reach this goal, it is looking more and more impossible, especially given the current strategy of brutal austerity measures. Instead of an end to the economic crisis, at this rate we can expect it to spread into a broader political crisis.

The proposals for reaching the other goals support the current economic system that got us into this mess in the first place. In trade, the Mexican government recommends free trade, no to all forms of protectionism and a blind faith that fixing macroeconomic factors will eventually improve the lives of the population.

Strengthening the financial system and fostering inclusion appears to be understood as instituting vigilance and monitoring mechanisms, with structural reforms and regulation off the table. Inclusion does not mean a fairer distribution of wealth generated, but access to the banking system for the poor.

The core proposal for improving the international financial architecture put forth to date is to increase funds in the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Mexican government officials have stated that this will be a fundamental goal at the meeting. However, to date it has received few echoes as nations struggle to find funds for rescue programs in their own countries. In member nations, such as Brazil and Argentina, enthusiasm is low, to say the least, for running funds through a non-representative and orthodox IMF that continues to heavily condition its loans.

In food security, Mexico will promote an agenda aimed at reducing volatility but without curtailing speculative markets. Calderon has publicly recognized the link between food prices, poverty and hunger, and the role of speculation but so far has not supported calls for ending speculation in basic foods.

Finally, "green development" and climate change should be the hallmarks of the Mexican G20 presidency but here, especially, the chances of success and the approval of energetic measures in these critical areas appears distant.  Mexico calls for attacking climate change through market mechanisms including promoting carbon markets, REDD+ and payment for environmental services, without a universally binding system of emissions controls--a necessary idea that was already proven politically dead in the water at the Climate Change Conference that Mexico hosted in December of last year.

Mexican civil society has organized in almost as many groups and sub-groups as the G20, to monitor, influence, critique or protest the official events--depending on who you talk to and what tack they're taking. Getting detailed information on the procedures and content of materials and proposals poses difficulties but the idea is to use the meeting to raise issues that affect real people. The question of the basic legitimacy or lack of legitimacy of the G20 as a forum for making global decisions--due to its lack of clear rules and exclusive membership--as well as its orientation toward the interests of the world's wealthiest and most powerful nations--remains central to strategies.

See also G20 Update

Globalization-Trade: 13 billion pounds of fresh fruit and vegetables cross the US-Mexican border each year

Another measure of the extent of Mexico-U.S. trade--and factoid of the week.

freshplaza.com: "Over 13 billion pounds of fresh fruit and vegetables cross the US-Mexican border each year." (If you want to know how the Dept. of Agriculture keeps track of this: read more)

Globalization--NAFTA: From Veracruz to North Carolina

CIP Americas: "Less than half a mile from Fausto Limon’s house is one of the many pig farms built by Granjas Carroll de Mexico (GCM) in the Perote Valley, a high, arid, volcano-rimmed basin straddling the Mexican states of Veracruz and Puebla. “Before the pig farms came, they said they would bring jobs,” Limon remembers. “But then we found out the reality. Yes, there were jobs, but they also brought a lot of contamination.”

David Torres, a Perote native who spent eight years in the operation’s maternity section, estimates that GCM has 80 complexes, each with as many as 20,000 hogs. The sheds look clean and modern. “When I went to work there, I could see the company was completely mechanized,” Torres says.

But in back of each complex is a large oxidation pond for the hogs’ urine and excrement. On a recent drive through the valley, only one of several dozen was covered. “Granjas Carroll doesn’t use concrete or membranes under their ponds,” Torres charges, “so the water table is getting contaminated. People here get their water from wells, which are surrounded by pig farms and oxidation ponds.”" read more

Globalization: US Aerospace and Defense Companies Set Up Shop in Mexico

Public Radio International: "In the past five to 10 years, more than 50 aerospace and defense companies have started operations in Baja California, according to Mexico’s trade ministry. Most of them are American, and they produce everything from electronic components to steel bolts for commercial and military aircraft." read more

NAFTA: How US Policies Fueled Mexico's Great Migration

The Nation: "The experience of Veracruz migrants reveals a close connection between US investment and trade deals in Mexico and the displacement and migration of its people. For nearly two decades, Smithfield (a U.S. company) has used NAFTA and the forces it unleashed to become the world’s largest packer and processor of hogs and pork. But the conditions in Veracruz that helped Smithfield make high profits plunged thousands of rural residents into poverty. Tens of thousands left Mexico, many eventually helping Smithfield’s bottom line once again by working for low wages on its US meatpacking lines." read more

NAFTA: Booming Mexico-U.S. Trade Buoys Kansas City Southern Railroad

This story points to the continued growth in Mexico's trade with the U.S.--and in U.S. corporate profits from that growth--by focusing on the role of a U.S. railroad's Mexican subsidiary in that trade.

Bloomberg: "Cross-border merchandise trade totaled $341 billion by the end of September, about 18 percent higher than it was at the same point in 2010, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics in Washington. The increase will help Kansas City Southern, the only U.S. railroad with a wholly owned Mexican subsidiary, ...as the 125-year-old company seeks to take business away from trucks traversing the border." read more

NAFTA: American Christmas trees take over Mexico

GlobalPost: "US and Canadian Christmas trees have flooded into Mexico in recent years .... This holiday season alone, more than a million trees have been imported over the Rio Grande to decorate homes celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, Mexico’s Environment Department reported. The imports now outnumber the 700,000 trees provided by Mexican growers this year.

But not everyone sees the southward flow of pines as a welcome present. Some Mexican farmers and politicians complain they are fighting unfair competition from the wealthy subsidized US plantations." read more

Mexico-U.S. relations: beyond 'looniness, stupidity and flatulence'

MinnPost: ""As in all good families, there will be looniness and stupidity and flatulence on both sides of the border." The speaker, Mexico's Ambassador to the U.S. Arturo Sarukhan, shared that colorful observation with an appreciative luncheon audience of the Economic Club of Minnesota last week as he warned about political rhetoric during both nations' 2012 presidential elections.

Sarukhan said both countries "will have to Teflon-coat our bilateral relationship so some of the stupidity that gets said on the campaign trail on either side of the border does not stick." Both countries also will need to "lock in the fundamental sea change that has occurred" in the U.S.-Mexico relationship." read more