Rating: 
Summary: The Stench of the Inner Workings
Review: After reading through the negative reviews below, I can't help but notice that they miss the point. This book is not an anti-globalization rant or a leftie-luddite treatise. What MacArthur has done is document the inner workings of an important "trade agreement," demonstrating that the triumph of the market is not an inevitable historical trend. Rather, the grand sweep of "globalization" is a project, a designed task, pushed through with real and purposive power. The job of pundits, CEOs, PR firms and politicians is to make the rank and file feel like the collapse of non-economic imperatives is the natural unfolding of history. MacArthur's book documents the kinds of things that citizens should be aware of as they happen, not ten years later in a searing expose. We need to shine a searchlight on our government right now, to uncover the backroom deals and smarmy PR snow-jobs that presently constitute the real substance of American politics. MacArthur's book shows us what to look for.
Rating: 
Summary: A Good History of NAFTA
Review: Chapter One tells of the history of the Swingline stapler business from 1920s to 1997. This still profitable business was shut down when production was moved to Mexico. Computers resulted in a great increase in the use of cut papers, and this needed more staples to fasten them together. Chapter Two quotes the David Ricardo statement of "comparative advantage" (p.71). Isn't this just a simple argument created to support a point of view, and not reality? It doesn't address shipping costs, or other facts. Hardware and other goods CAN be manufactured in America and Poland, or France and Portugal. This example masks the political decisions hidden in his argument. Page 75 quotes Ricardo again, and notes it was false when he wrote it; another created argument. Pages 78-79 repeat the praises for President Salinas, then. He unilaterally lowered Mexican tariffs to allow US exports to gain market share; the book says this wrecked the Mexican economy, and Salinas fled the country to avoid arrest for murder and money laundering! The net effect was to loot and impoverish the country. Page 95 speaks of the Republicans and Democrats as if they were real things, and not just names for a collection of special interests that create oratory to advance their aims. Page 97 discusses the rational of lowered tariffs: to fight "communism" by importing foreign goods! The fact that those who profited by financing and merchandising these imports also influenced government policy is just another coincidence. Pages 99-125 tell of the intrigue behind the passing of NAFTA (like other special interest legislation). These pages are one of the most important part of the book! Chapter Three investigates the details of the NAFTA agreement. It starts with the candidature of William Clinton, a "master of two-dimensional obfuscation" ("like Woodrow Wilson") on p.143. Clinton's attraction was that, however flawed, he could win and the politicians preferred him over a loser, however pure. Clinton supported NAFTA because that was where the big money was (p.150). Also, it would not give Bush an issue when Clinton was ahead in the polls. Chapter Four deals with the politics of passing NAFTA with Democratic Party votes. President Clinton sought the help of the Republican Party and the Fortune 500 (p.199). Why? "Politics is self-interest. Simply put, it's complete self-interest. The fact of the matter is, they'll get in bed with anyone" (p.201). Pages 17-8 tell how a "grass roots" campaign is manufactured. Pages 218-9 tell how a "grass tops" campaign is run: find important people in a congressional district and get them to repeat your
requests in person. with a lower tariff on Mexican imports, the lost revenue means higher taxes for Americans whether or not they still have a job (p.232). "The fact of the matter is they won NAFTA because of money, because of gifts, because of special interests, goodies, and everything else. They did not necessarily win the debate" (p.275). Since then the number of manufacturing jobs have declined; NAFTA helped to export jobs, not goods (p.282). Pages 285-6 lists the bad things that happened after NAFTA's ratification. Page 291 says the abolition of the Mexican communal land system (like the English Encclosure Acts) drove millions off the land, and some across the border; an increasing pool of cheap labor.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Read!
Review: John MacArthur, editor of Harper's Magazine, is a persistent, resourceful, and thorough reporter with an unapologetic opinion about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). MacArthur makes no attempt to disguise his disdain for the trade pact, which he describes as a measure designed to institutionalize U.S. exploitation of Mexican workers, or for the politicians, businessmen and lobbyists who supported it. In researching this book, MacArthur interviewed many of the key national and international players who helped create NAFTA and found rare interviews with others. He illustrates the debate by presenting an analysis of NAFTA's impact on workers at a U.S factory, and on the Mexicans who replace them. Ironically, he paints such an effective portrait of the inner workings of the Mexican maquiladoras factories that U.S. business leaders reading this book might be further enticed to relocate. The finest feature of the book is its exhaustive treatment of the law-making process, and its lucid judgment of the Washington establishment. We [...] recommend this book to students of politics or international trade, business leaders interested in gaining insight into the anti-globalization movement, and to anyone trying to get a bill passed in the U.S. Congress.
Rating:
Summary: sell out of nations
Review: MacArthur begins his book from the venerable Swingline Staple Company of Queens, NY, with profiles of employees, union activists, owners over the last 30 years. Not so long a period, but starting at a time when a lattice of low technology manufacturing still ringed the great metropolis and bustled in the lower regions of Manhattan. They provided a modest but sustaining salary and a route to the ladders of American society for generations of immigrants. By the end of that period those societal understandings had given way to a much different order. Swingline moved its operations to the dollar an hour wages and shanty towns of Nogales, Mexico, channeling back product to an American market they were no longer willing to support with their payroll. The author exposes the shell (or shill) game that took over the debate of North American Free Trade. Politicians as diverse as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton cynically assured the electorate that open trade heralded an era of unequaled prosperity and opportunity, propelled by such vacant aphorisms as the 'information economy' or the 'new realities' of global business. The agenda was marketed as 'inevitable'. The neoliberal lobby managed to bamboozle a skeptical public and buy the political establishment. By 1994 this well financed machine had bribed or bullied its way to passage of NAFTA in all three countries. A full-scale reorganization of continental industry ensued, with an attendant labour disenfranchisement, deindustrialization and currency sabotage. The corrupt Salinas regime exemplified the motives of the Free Traders. Mexico's acceptance of their wealthy northern neighbors' largesse of 'investment' was extorted in part by their inability to pay the usurious loans of the IMF and foreign banks. NAFTA has since led to a collapsing peso and living standards that have dropped by a third. That has legions besieging the U.S. border. Free Trade, though, means anything but free movement of labour for impoverished Mexicans. Its profit equation hinges on a desperate, captive work force. In some ways MacArthur's focus on the most ostentatious of Free Trade icons is the book's weakness. Mexico has, after all, no more than 4% of the American GDP. The workers of the maquiladoras are poorly educated and low skilled. It was only the most vulnerable, politically expendable Canadian and American workers who would be sacrificed to NAFTA. Discarding this lynchpin, however, has profound implications to the soundness of any nation's overall socio- economic structure. The more insidious aspects of the Free Trade movement comes from agreements mentioned only in passing in this book. The Tokyo and Uruguay rounds of GATT, the WTO, a myriad of bilateral agreements, operating below public awareness, are devastating the high tech, high paying upper rung of industry-- steel, agriculture, chemicals, automotive, ship building, textiles, electronics, robotics. These processes sustain a sophisticated scientific infrastructure, critical to any economy that hopes to maintain its industrial integrity. They come easily under attack from countries who provide focused government direction, structural protection, subsidy, targeting the laissez-faire underbelly North American commerce. The result is clear. Free Trade brings fragmenting inequity, stagnation of incomes, a steady devolution of government services under the drumbeat of 'privatization' and 'deregulation', fragile bubble economies, erosion of industrial capacity. Multitudes are tossed into the dustbin of the new economy, joining the ranks of the working poor or no longer deemed countable even as unemployment statistics. The media blithely proclaims all a success, the human detritus neatly excluded from recognition. This is the real legacy of politicians of all stripes who have sold out their countries to this juggernaut. The dissolution of the sovereign nation state promises a cult of government inertia, leaving the field to the most debased and predatory of commercial interests.
Rating:
Summary: sell out of nations
Review: MacArthur begins his book from the venerable Swingline Staple Company of Queens, NY, with profiles of employees, union activists, owners over the last 30 years. Not so long a period, but starting at a time when a lattice of low technology manufacturing still ringed the great metropolis and bustled in the lower regions of Manhattan. They provided a modest but sustaining salary and a route to the ladders of American society for generations of immigrants. By the end of that period those societal understandings had given way to a much different order. Swingline moved its operations to the dollar an hour wages and shanty towns of Nogales, Mexico, channeling back product to an American market they were no longer willing to support with their payroll. The author exposes the shell (or shill) game that took over the debate of North American Free Trade. Politicians as diverse as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton cynically assured the electorate that open trade heralded an era of unequaled prosperity and opportunity, propelled by such vacant aphorisms as the 'information economy' or the 'new realities' of global business. The agenda was marketed as 'inevitable'. The neoliberal lobby managed to bamboozle a skeptical public and buy the political establishment. By 1994 this well financed machine had bribed or bullied its way to passage of NAFTA in all three countries. A full-scale reorganization of continental industry ensued, with an attendant labour disenfranchisement, deindustrialization and currency sabotage. The corrupt Salinas regime exemplified the motives of the Free Traders. Mexico's acceptance of their wealthy northern neighbors' largesse of 'investment' was extorted in part by their inability to pay the usurious loans of the IMF and foreign banks. NAFTA has since led to a collapsing peso and living standards that have dropped by a third. That has legions besieging the U.S. border. Free Trade, though, means anything but free movement of labour for impoverished Mexicans. Its profit equation hinges on a desperate, captive work force. In some ways MacArthur's focus on the most ostentatious of Free Trade icons is the book's weakness. Mexico has, after all, no more than 4% of the American GDP. The workers of the maquiladoras are poorly educated and low skilled. It was only the most vulnerable, politically expendable Canadian and American workers who would be sacrificed to NAFTA. Discarding this lynchpin, however, has profound implications to the soundness of any nation's overall socio- economic structure. The more insidious aspects of the Free Trade movement comes from agreements mentioned only in passing in this book. The Tokyo and Uruguay rounds of GATT, the WTO, a myriad of bilateral agreements, operating below public awareness, are devastating the high tech, high paying upper rung of industry-- steel, agriculture, chemicals, automotive, ship building, textiles, electronics, robotics. These processes sustain a sophisticated scientific infrastructure, critical to any economy that hopes to maintain its industrial integrity. They come easily under attack from countries who provide focused government direction, structural protection, subsidy, targeting the laissez-faire underbelly North American commerce. The result is clear. Free Trade brings fragmenting inequity, stagnation of incomes, a steady devolution of government services under the drumbeat of 'privatization' and 'deregulation', fragile bubble economies, erosion of industrial capacity. Multitudes are tossed into the dustbin of the new economy, joining the ranks of the working poor or no longer deemed countable even as unemployment statistics. The media blithely proclaims all a success, the human detritus neatly excluded from recognition. This is the real legacy of politicians of all stripes who have sold out their countries to this juggernaut. The dissolution of the sovereign nation state promises a cult of government inertia, leaving the field to the most debased and predatory of commercial interests.
Rating:
Summary: The death of Franklin Roosevelt's Democratic party
Review: The author of this book clearly shows that NAFTA is not about "free trade," but is in fact an investment agreement designed to protect American multi-national corporations that relocate to Mexico for "cheap labor". Mexico has a GNP about 4% of the U.S. GNP; the only people in Mexico who are able to buy American goods are either in the durg trade or the Mexican government elite. The author tells a story of discarded American workers (Swingline Staplers, Long Island City) who loose their plant and jobs to their Mexican brothers and sisters in the great "cheap labor" camps of the Maquiladora Program. But this is also the terrible story of how Bill Clinton and Co. finished off the party of FDR, and made it the party of "cheap labor" sold to corporate interests for campaign contributions. As I read the book I kept thinking that maybe it's time for the American labor movement to run a candidate for President (Bonier?) and demand a North American Free Labor Agreement that will protect American workers, Mexican workers-and all workers everywhere. And I think such a movement would likely attract many on the American right, who are very anti-authoritarian, and deeply distrustful of what Mussolini called "corporatism"-which is what Mussolini said fascism was all about. Great, thought provoking book. Brovo.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad at all
Review: The book is an extended essay and as such has to be read cover to cover. I found the book readable because the author cites concrete examples to buttress general arguments (i.e. the Swingline operation), and also because the author writes well (no mean feat these days). I concur with his point of view. I feel compelled to point out a couple of things to his detractors. First of all, MacArthur never confuses 'America' with the American political and financial establishment. It is clear that the establishment, which spearheads the 'globalisation' movement is doing fine out of things like NAFTA. The average American, however, is getting the short end of the stick. Manufacturing continues to decline in the USA and one has only to glance at the trade figures to see this. This has consequences I don't want to belabor here. I do want to say that the new service sector jobs are not only less skilled in general but less well-paid and even more vulnerable to changes in the economic climate than manufacturing. The second point is: what does it mean to say that the USA is an economic superpower? Many of the world's largest companies have their head offices here, true. That's about it. The outlook of these companies is global and they have no particular sentimental attachment to any one area. The USA is just one more colony to be commercially exploited.Perhaps the idea of the nation state will go the way of the cheshire cat, with only the smile left behind.
Rating:
Summary: Meet the real Al Gore
Review: There are two protectionist camps in the United States. In one is Patrick Buchanan and his doctrine of America First. His populist pitch is simple: Foreigners are taking our jobs. In the other are people such as Harper's publisher John R. MacArthur. As a salon-dwelling member of protectionism's lefty camp, he cares deeply about complex issues such as rainforest preservation and child labour. He has a harder job than Buchanan: When he knocks free trade, he can't limit himself to the dubious proposition that it harms American workers. He has to tackle the even more dubious proposition that it threatens labourers in the developing world as well. MacArthur's new book, The Selling of 'Free Trade', advances the argument that the American campaign in favour of the North American Free Trade Agreement was a cynical sham. The businessmen who lined up behind Bill Clinton simply wanted a piece of paper to protect their Mexican sweatshops from expropriation. NAFTA was about investment, not trade. And so the five-letter acronym is a lie all by itself. If you share MacArthur's distrust of globalization, then the bulk of the book -- the detailed back-story of how Clinton and his staff won political support for NAFTA -- will be of great interest. But if you do not, The Selling of 'Free Trade' will be a bore. The nuts and bolts of Washington logrolling are not inherently captivating. A reader who comes at The Selling of 'Free Trade' with a benign view of NAFTA will find the story of what lobbyist met which congressman where and who issued what press release when to be dull and dry. MacArthur, knowing this, spends roughly a third of his book trying to convince his readers that NAFTA was not only corrupt in conception, but also harmful in effect. He relies mostly on anecdote; and why not? Storytelling is a protectionist's best friend. The benefits of free trade are widely diffused among consumers and manufacturers, while the costs, though smaller, are borne by an identifiable group of failed business owners and laid off employees. And so, in the very first chapter, MacArthur makes a lunge for our heartstrings by sketching the post-NAFTA shutdown of the Swingline Inc. stapler manufacturing plants in Queens, N.Y. We are told the tale of Gorica Kostrevski, a hard-working Macedonian immigrant who, after 26 years with Swingline, loses her union job as a machine operator when the company moves its operation to Mexico. From there on in, MacArthur tirelessly summons up the image of poor Gorica to lacquer a human-interest veneer onto his political chronology. Later on, MacArthur takes us to the Mexican city of Nogales, home to thousands of American-owned assembly plants (maquiladoras), including Swingline's. Using the city's impoverished townships as his backdrop, he hammers home the point that low wages and a lack of independent labour unions produce a work environment that is "exploitative." It is not a convincing line of argument. Cheap labour is the one inexhaustible resource that all poor nations can sell the world. Mexico's exports have skyrocketed since NAFTA's implementation. And, as MacArthur himself grudgingly admits, the working conditions and wages available at maquiladoras are better than those available in Mexico's homegrown industries. If maquiladoras paid a U.S.-scale union wage, or were required to provide American-style fringe benefits, every one of them would close. Forty-hour work weeks and ergonomic counsellors are luxuries the developing world cannot afford. And if MacArthur actually lived in a Nogales shantytown -- rather than merely driving through one to collect anti-maquiladora sob stories -- I rather doubt he would mind being "exploited" by an American employer. The "exploitative" tag only makes sense when MacArthur applies as his benchmark the rights of America's unionized workforce -- a workforce that, thanks to education and capital investment, is many times more productive per capita than Mexico's. On this latter point, the distinction between Pat Buchanan and John MacArthur -- between the leftist and rightist strains of protectionism -- starts to blur. Both venerate Joe Union and see any threat to his livelihood as a sort of conspiracy. It is just that Buchanan sees it as a conspiracy against nation and MacArthur sees it as a conspiracy against class. But, at least Buchanan spares us the argument that he is protecting the interests of the world's huddled masses. MacArthur, with his sanctimonious play on the idea of "exploitation," does not. The Selling of 'Free Trade' carries the mark of a dying breed. Few on the left can look at South Korea, Ireland and Indonesia and maintain with a straight face that globalization constitutes an exploitative plot hatched by Nike and McDonald's. While Harper's is still full of anti-globalization screeds (a recent issue contained an affectionate profile of the anti-corporate rabble that descended on Seattle in November), other leftist vehicles -- such as The New Republic and The New York Times -- are conceding the obvious. It is only a matter of time, I suspect, before John MacArthur does the same. And one more thing: When I finished The Selling of 'Free Trade', just for fun, I phoned Gorica Kostrevski at her home in Whitestone, N.Y. (there is only one Kostrevski listed for all New York state). I asked her what happened after she got laid off from Swingline. "I get new job quick in Manhattan. I do maintenance now," she told me in her thick Macedonian accent. "More money?" I asked. "Yes, more money," she said, "I am good worker!"
Rating:
Summary: The silent majority
Review: This book had no recommendations, no dust jacket, and no introduction to the qualifications of the author. The only reason I picked it up out of the library was because I am currenty a student of International Business and Global Economics.Our group assigment is to pursue a debate upon free trade in general, for the opposition.
For it's treatment of trade theory, especially Smith and Ricardo,I thought MacArthur picked up a salient point...why in the modern world of technology and global trade are thinking individuals (for example...academics?) silently allowing a group of self-interested multi-national corporations to devour and destroy what took western societies, not just capitalists, hundreds of years to attain?
Namely, a worker-protected environment, minimum wage laws, and government regulations to prevent exploitation of labour? Vanishing due to greed. The same old greed that could be scientifically theorized upon more than two hundred years
ago, during the ages of mercantilism and comparative advantage.
Why no new theories on how to maintain worker rights?
MacArthur identifies the players in American politics, the benefits assumed and trade among all dealers in the free trade debate, and spends as much time as is necessary to capture the attention of the reader. Canada and Mexico are mere pawns here in a game the Americans play much better than many nations.
Thus clear causes and effects of the support of free trade in these other nations should be reviewed in numerous other texts.
The points he picks up the best include the clauses in chapter eleven preventing privatisation of Mexican-held American assets, the collusion of the mass media, the deification of Salinas, etc.
The question he raises with the greatest irony, "How could such a trade policy be permitted without minimum standards of environmental and labour regulations in the developing
country, as was required in the EU of Portugal and Greece?"
Finally, the idea should be about creating wider consumer markets of products, which due to this trade deal, almost certainly will never happen in Mexico. The experts still
remain silent about the after-effects, research classified
into documents that claim the success of the project will
take fifteen to twenty years to adequately assess...waiting
for those accountable to pass away? Not a great sucking sound, but a slow, persistent dripping sound.
Now I know why one of my co-workers in the desert was from Georgetown University. Idealism dies pretty fast in
MacArthur's lens upon Free Trade. An enlightening read.
Rating:
Summary: Comparing the Scorecard on NAFTA to the Promises
Review: We are used to reading the promises about new legislation in bright headlines. What we are less used to is getting the story of how it all turned out. The Selling of "Free Trade" is at its best when it focuses on describing the impact on manufacturing jobs since NAFTA was enacted. The detailing of how the law was passed is also included, and is a typical story of special interests effectively using their resources. The question of how to evaluate NAFTA economically is a complicated one, and the book's main weakness is that the author has done too simple a job of analysis. However, he should be commended for starting to compile the data. Essentially, NAFTA has generated lots of jobs in Mexico along the border that pay a little better and provide a little better working conditions than exist in the rural interior of Mexico. There has been no boom in high-paying manufacturing jobs in the United States, and many manufacturing jobs have been lost. The book does a good job of detailing these factors. Ross Perot's promise of a "giant sucking sound" from jobs leaving the United States was closer to the reality we have experienced so far that what anyone else told us. On the other hand and unmentioned in the book, NAFTA has created an enormous strategic advantage for the U.S. economy by making low-cost, custom manufacturing possible in the United States. Companies like Dell Computer would not be able to use the manufacturing methods they do except for the presence of low-cost component factories along the Mexican border. It is this system of one-of production at low costs that has put such a severe crimp into Japanese and Chinese manufacturing exports in advanced industries. As a result, a lot of manufacturing jobs for the U.S. were probably created or saved that would otherwise have been lost. The wealth effect of the increased values of American companies from the increased profits is mentioned, but also is not analyzed. The wealth effect also creates and sustains jobs, usually outside of manufacturing. I suspect that if the analysis were undertaken it would show that NAFTA has been good for developing jobs in the United States in total, even though the head-to-head comparisons on manufacturing jobs belie that conclusion. However, no one can know until the analysis is done. On the political side, I don't know how I feel about the log-rolling to pass NAFTA until I know whether the legislation was good for the country or not. I know it wasn't too helpful for those who lost their jobs and could not find new ones. But in a time of decreasing unemployment that effect should have been lessened. What happened to those who lost their jobs is also unchronicled by this book, except for a few anecdotes. That would make a great story in and of itself. On the other hand, the additions to the country seem to be enormous in terms of market share gains, profit increases, and a higher value for securities. Also, consumers have probably enjoyed lower prices. If you like the human interest angle behind a major change like this, you will like Mr. MacArthur's approach. He did a good job of grasping the detail with his story of the Swingline move to Mexico and the political processes involved. One thing I learned from this book was that true bipartisan support means that there is an enormous amount at stake for some special interest. To do that there has to be enough campaign money delivered to buy support from both major parties. I used to think that such issues were above partisanship. Foolish me! After you have read and learned from this interesting book, take another issue where the politicians agree and ask yourself what the long-term consequences are for your country. We should all consider those questions first and more carefully than the ones where they disagree. Don't let complacency turn your country into a victim!
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