Farm & Food groups call for new way on NAFTA

Washington, DC – President Trump’s call to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico has unsurprisingly incited the worst political crisis between the two countries in decades. That action, and the notion that a tax on Mexican imports (and U.S. consumers) could pay for the barrier, willfully ignore the real causes of declining livelihoods and increasing inequality, especially in rural areas.

 

President Trump has also said he will renegotiate NAFTA to benefit Americans or withdraw from it altogether. U.S family farm and food organizations counter that, rather than pitting people in one country against another, NAFTA must “be replaced with a different agreement with the goal of increasing living standards in all three countries.” Any renegotiation should start with an open assessment of NAFTA that includes both rural and urban communities, followed by a transparent negotiating process that eliminates the secrecy and backroom deals that has plagued past trade negotiations.

 

NAFTA has been controversial since its inception for promoting the interest of agribusiness and other multinational corporations over those of family farmers. In a statement of principles for NAFTA renegotiation, the groups asserted that U.S. trade deals “have contributed to the economic and social erosion of rural communities in the U.S. and oftentimes devastation of its trading partners and fail to address very real problems of price volatility and environmental sustainability.”