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Tariff's end riles Mexican farmers
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
sebt by Steven Robinson - activ-l
Atlanta Journal-Constitution - Dec 23, 2007
http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/2007/12/21/nafta_1223.html
[As a result of NAFTA, Mexico has lost nearly 3 million farm jobs. SR]
Tariff's end riles Mexican farmers
NAFTA's impact on corn, beans a big fear
By Jeremy Schwartz
Mexico City - Farmers and activists here are planning a series of
protests as NAFTA enters its final stage on New Year's Day, when the
last tariffs and quotas on corn, beans, milk and sugar melt away.
Opponents of the free trade agreement warn that the final lifting of
trade barriers could spark even more migration from Mexico's devastated
countryside and leave Mexico dependent on the United States for corn and
beans, staple dishes since the age of the Aztecs.
At least one peasant group has said the NAFTA expansion could spark
armed rebellion in the countryside if President Felipe Calderon's
government doesn't do more to protect small farmers.
Corn and beans were considered especially sensitive to the Mexican
economy when the free trade agreement was signed in 1993, and officials
buffered them with 15 years of gradually dwindling protections.
Government officials insist the Jan. 1 opening is largely symbolic since
corn and bean tariffs have mostly been phased out already.
NAFTA sup****ters in Mexico say protesters are trying to wrest more
government aid by exaggerating the impact of the opening.
"It's an im****tant date because it marks the end of the process," said
Luis de la Calle, a Mexico City economist who helped negotiate the
original agreement in the early 1990s. "But in terms of the market,
there will be very little impact."
But members of Mexico's left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party, or
PRD, the second-largest party in Congress, have called on Calderon to
renegotiate the final opening and remove corn and beans from the list
of unprotected trade goods.
Calderon, however, has shown no inclination to tinker with the free
trade agreement.
"The government is scared of renegotiating [corn and bean tariffs]
because renegotiating part could mean renegotiating the whole thing,"
said Jose Romero, a NAFTA expert at the College of Mexico. "And they
worry renegotiating could send bad signals to international financial
markets."
Mexican farm associations say the nation's farmers are woefully
unprepared to face an onslaught of American corn, and they decry the
large subsidies that U.S. corn farmers receive.
Last week the World Trade Organization launched an investigation into
whether the United States has surpassed international limits on
so-called trade distorting subsidies for its farmers by billions of
dollars since 1999.
And American farmers are far more productive than their Mexican
counterparts. According to the Mexican Institute of Competition,
American farms produce an average of 22 tons of corn per acre, compared
with just 6 tons per acre on Mexican farms. [ Query whether this
"productivity" takes into account the massivepetroleum/natural gas
imputs used in US agriculture. SR]
Cruz Lopez, president of the National Farmers Confederation, said
domestic corn producers fear they will go out of business, unable to
compete with American im****ts, and leave Mexico dependent on the United
States for its basic food needs.
"There is an abyss between the [subsidies] that we receive and those of
the Canadian and U.S. farmers," Lopez said. "For us, it is very
im****tant to guarantee to the Mexican people that we can produce corn
and beans."
Mexico im****ts about 10 million tons of corn annually, compared with
the 22 million tons it produces domestically.
Mexican farmers are pu****ng for more subsidies from the Mexican
government, and they are predicting dire consequences if they don't
receive help.
"If this refusal to protect the national producers continues on the
part of the government ... the countryside could take the path of
weapons and the guerrilla," said Max Correa, leader of the Central
Campesina Cardenista Peasant, a farmers' advocacy group. "It's not a
catastrophic vision, it's a reality," he told the Mexican media
recently.
Since Mexico entered into NAFTA, it has lost nearly 3 million farm jobs
and seen a massive migration from the countryside to the United States.
An estimated 80 percent of the 400,000 Mexicans who annually migrate to
the United States are from rural areas.
Many experts say that the great bet of NAFTA - that peasant farmers
would find jobs in a burgeoning Mexican manufacturing industry - hasn't
been realized.
"The U.S. doesn't want them, the manufacturing industry can't absorb
them, so where do they go?" Romero said. "They don't have the political
strength to influence policies."
Experts say the high worldwide price of corn, driven by increased
ethanol production, should provide a buffer for Mexican farmers, but
that could prove tem****ary.
The end of sugar tariffs, however, should benefit Mexican producers by
opening up the lucrative American market, de la Calle said.
But Mexican sugar producers fret that high production costs in Mexico
could slow ex****ts to the United States.
Among the protest actions planned are street rallies in various Mexican
cities and a human chain along the U.S.-Mexico border. Protesters have
already staged a week-long hunger strike in downtown Mexico City.
But with the Mexican Congress on holiday recess and Calderon
uninterested in renegotiating, experts say the chances of heading off
the Jan. 1 opening are non-existent.
*
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