[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

                                 ______


                          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.

                          ____________________