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 Business News | October 2007 
Mexican Ambassador Upbeat on Trade
 Louie Gilot - El Paso Times
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| | Arturo Sarukhán |
The Mexican ambassador to the United States says NAFTA was a success and should be widened.
During his first visit to El Paso last weekend, Arturo Sarukhán said the tri-national treaty was not the unmitigated success certain politicians envisioned but was certainly not the "giant sucking sound" of jobs to Mexico that Ross Perot had predicted.
In Mexico, NAFTA ushered in the resurgence of the middle class after the Tequila Crisis.
"It made Mexico more accountable. Mexico became much more open," he said. "A fuller democracy in Mexico is in some ways is rooted in NAFTA."
But he admitted that the wealth had not trickled down to the poorest Mexicans and that Mexico must work harder to retain "300,000 to 400,000 men and women who are bold and cross into the United States" each year.
Sarukhán spoke Oct. 7 at a journalism conference at UTEP. He identified two ways to "widen and deepen" NAFTA - removing restrictions on Mexican trucks and on Mexican avocados.
He called drayage, the shuttling of cargo from Mexico to warehouses on the U.S. side of the border to be turned over to U.S. drivers, a "rigmarole exercise" costing $80 a truck.
"The system is rigged to protect the interests of the Teamsters," he said. "This isn't about safe roads or drivers who can't read signs."
It may be, but in El Paso, drayage is the bread and butter of myriad local warehouses, customs brokers, truckers and others who fear for their livelihood.
Sarukhán also criticized efforts by California avocado growers to block the importation of Mexican avocados.
He said that Mexican states have become dependent on avocados (avocado production in Michoacan rose from 13 million pounds in 1997 to 300 million pounds in 2007) and that impeding that trade would only fuel more immigration.
Sarukhán said the United States and Mexico can only benefit from their economies being more integrated and can show the world that open trade is good for democracy.
Sarukhán has a master's degree in U.S. foreign policy from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. |
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