During a visit to the Hinckley Institute of Politics last week, Jeffery Jones, Mexico’s undersecretary of agriculture, touted the benefits of the North American Free Trade Agreement and advocated his plan of agricultural prosperity for Mexico.
“In Mexico, NAFTA has created a much better standard of living,” Jones said. “I’m a believer in free trade. Free trade anywhere around the world benefits consumers. You’ve seen a shift in Mexican diets toward higher-protein diets because of more available and competitive options for consumers in the country.”
NAFTA eliminated most tariffs on foreign goods when it was instituted in 1993. The agreement was fully implemented in January and all remaining tariffs were abolished except those relating to eggs, dairy, poultry and sugar.
Jones said NAFTA was worth the effort and cited the avocado market as an example of proof that NAFTA is working.
“The market solved the problem,” he said. “By opening up the U.S. market to a competitive advantage that Mexico has, farmers who have gotten into growing avocados have done very, very well. We’re having to be very careful about not taking down forests and putting in avocado trees.”
But Vrizia Ceja, a junior political science major who grew up in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, doesn’t agree that NAFTA has been a success.
“I don’t think it’s doing any good,” she said. “The poor farmers are struggling to compete and the people working in American companies in Mexico aren’t making very good wages. I think it’s just helping the rich people who own the companies.”
Jones acknowledged that some Mexican farmers have been hurt by NAFTA.
“That’s mostly because they’re producing a crop that doesn’t have a competitive advantage,” he said. “The crops that Mexico does have a competitive advantage with are crops that are labor intensive.”
Jones said free trade implies that people will have to change. He said they will have to work in areas where they are competitive.
“That’s what the entire philosophy of wealth of nations is about?You specialize in something and you do it well and then you trade,” he said.
Jones said the long-term key for agricultural prosperity in Mexico is education.
“Wealth is based on knowledge,” Jones said. “When you look at countries around the world that have made great leaps in terms of development, they’ve been in human capital and knowledge.”
Mexico is the No. 1 provider to the U.S. market for various fruits and vegetables, Jones said.
“What NAFTA does is it connects people to the markets,” he said. “It’s not a problem of NAFTA. We knew NAFTA was coming. The people who are having problems aren’t connected to the markets. They need to connect through education and training.”