j reacts to apparent pressure from breitbart for trump to flop on trade

i've said this before: what mexico needs to do is get it's labour standards up. it needs more regulation. it needs higher wages. that's the actual ideal here, rather than ripping nafta up: getting mexico up to code. if mexico had comparable wages, standards and regulations to the united states and canada, they wouldn't have this labour advantage and other factors would determine where the factories end up.

there's a legitimate level of moral outrage over the idea that the comparative advantage is a race to the bottom. i'm no fan of market logic or competitive economies, but you'd get a lot less pushback if the competitive aspect was over who is better, not who is worse. for that reason, this issue is never going to go away. you can throw as many skewed statistics around as you want, you're ultimately not addressing the actual issue.

now, on the one hand, the argument was always that nafta would pull them up to code. on the other hand, everybody always knew that was bullshit - that the point of nafta was for the corporations to escape the code.

enough time has now passed to make the following conclusion: if the purpose of nafta was to pull mexico up to code, then it has failed. there's been some progress, sure, but not enough. and, this should be the focus from the next president, and perhaps the president after that.

so, the way this should work is like this: the president should put some demands down on the mexican political system, and provide it with a timetable to meet those demands. i'm not proposing anything onerous, only that mexico bring itself up to code so that there's an even playing field across the three countries. should it meet those demands, nafta stays. should it reject them, nafta ends.

but, i want to be clear that i don't think the failure here is at a legislative level. nobody seriously ought to expect that a parliament will pass these kinds of laws without pressure from below. i know that mexico has a history of labour repression, but newsflash: so does the united states. and, in fact, so does canada. there may be a difference of scale. but, why has mexican labour not risen up and demanded more? where are the mexican consumer watch dog groups? where is the mexican left?

again: they've had enough time to get this sorted out, and they're not doing it. so, they need some pressure from the outside. and, if they won't do it, the agreement can't continue.

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/05/05/former-mexican-president-vicente-fox-nafta-miracle/