if nafta is so helpful why is it so hated? have you followed up my previous suggestions and read any stiglitz on our trade policies?

The North American Free Trade Agreement is neither a free trade agreement, nor a fair trade agreement. If it was a free trade agreement, it would be a short agreement, a few pages, as each country promises to eliminate its tariffs, its non-tariff barriers, and its subsidies. A few additional pages would define the pace in which these barriers would be eliminated. But the agreement runs for hundreds of pages. It is a managed trade agreement, and managed in many ways to protect special interests, like America's agricultural interests. American subsidized corn depresses the price of corn in Mexico, which is one of the reasons that NAFTA has contributed to the growth of rural poverty. The agreement keeps in place a host of non-tariff barriers, which have been repeatedly used to keep Mexican goods out of the American market.

Equally troublesome, however, is the fact that NAFTA represents an intrusion into areas that go well beyond trade. Chapter 11, which is supposed to be a provision ensuring investor protection, threatens the ability of the member state to impose effective environmental and other regulations. The Clinton Administration successfully opposed such initiatives, when they were proposed by anti-environmentalists in the U.S. Congress. Yet virtually without discussion, the provision became law, snuck in "under the radar screen" in NAFTA.

NAFTA has been a disappointment. The advocates hoped that it would help Mexico grow, and by closing the disparity between incomes in the U.S. and Mexico, it would reduce migration pressure. But in the first decade of NAFTA, the disparity in incomes actually increased, and, as I explain in Making Globalization Work, NAFTA was at least partly to blame. Especially with incomes of the poor corn farmers falling as a result of NAFTA, migration pressure actually increased.

Nothing could generate much more ill will between America and its neighbors to the south than the wall which it is constructing, the new "iron curtain." This is not the way to curtail the flow of people, who are desperate to have a job and earn a decent living. The way to reduce the migration pressure is to increase incomes in Mexico and the other countries of Latin and Central America. A true free trade agreement would do that. America would benefit too by eliminating (or at least severely curtailing) its agricultural subsidies. Taxpayers would be better off, and the environment would be better off. (But of course the large corporate farms would stand to lose the most.) Hopefully, in the not too distant future, America will be able to stop this hypocrisy and stand by its principles.. - stiglitz

Here's a succinct assessment of some of what the impact of NAFTA has been on Canada and Canadian society:

The impact of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement should be measured against the only standard that ultimately counts when evaluating public policy: has "free trade" bettered the lives of the people affected by it?

The answer is that not only has NAFTA failed to deliver the goods it promised, but its cumulative effect on the well-being of a large majority of Canadians, and on the social cohesion of our society, has been negative. While personal income growth under free trade has registered its worst performance of any comparable period since World War II, income inequality (after tax and transfers) has increased for the first time since the 1920s.

It is important at the outset to state that NAFTA alone is not to blame. The culprit is the neoliberal--or market fundamentalist--agenda that has dominated policy-making in Canada. NAFTA is a central component and locking-in mechanism of a package of mutually reinforcing policies--including tax and public program cuts, privatization, deregulation, and monetary austerity.

The most striking feature of the growing inequality driven by this agenda has been the massive gains of the richest 1% of income earners at the expense of most of the population. The growth of precarious employment, the undermining of unions as a countervailing power to transnational capital, the erosion of the Canadian social state, and heightened economic dependence on the U.S.--all are additional hallmarks of the free trade era in Canada.

NAFTA is about much more than deregulating trade. It is about removing restrictions on the mobility of capital. It goes way behind the border to the heart of domestic policy-making. It is an economic constitution, conferring enforceable rights on investors, limiting the powers of government, and making it extremely difficult for future governments to change. At its core, NAFTA is about shifting the power in the economy from governments and workers to corporations....

Canada's social model differs significantly from that of the U.S. Canada has a more equal distribution of earnings, reflecting higher unionization rates, higher minimum wages, and a smaller pay gap between the middle and the top of the earnings spectrum. It has a more progressive tax system and a more generous system of social transfers.

Thus, while the average disposable income in the U.S. is higher than in Canada, the bottom third of Canadians are much better off than their U.S. counterparts. The gap between middle-income Canadians and Americans is small, particularly if adjusted for out-of-pocket health care costs. It is only among the richest third where the disposable income of Americans is much greater than that of their Canadian counterparts. The after-tax-and-transfer income gap between the top and bottom 10% of families is 4:1 in Canada compared to 6.5:1 in the U.S. The poverty rate (defined as less than two-thirds of the median income) is 10% in Canada compared to 17% in the U.S.

That said, however, growing wealth and income inequality and a shrinking Canadian social state have been hallmarks of the free trade era. NAFTA, while adding pressure, does not mandate this kind of harmonization downward to the U.S. social model, nor is it inevitable. But NAFTA competitiveness considerations have provided a pretext for the tax-cut and "smaller government" agendas of our neo-con provincial and federal governments.

After four decades of narrowing the income gap in Canada, after-tax-and-transfer family income inequality has widened during the free trade era. The bottom 20% of families saw their incomes fall by 7.6% during 1989-2004, while the incomes of the top 20% of families rose 16.8%.