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North America faces a raft of problems – security, immigration, transportation,

development, infrastructure, energy, labor, the environment, and, not the least, a

lack of institutions and a spirit of cooperation. All three countries are still groping

for ways to respond to 9/11. None of these issues are mentioned in the North

American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Notwithstanding the complaints of the Democratic presidential candidates, the

problem is not NAFTA, and the time for debating it is long past. The problem is

that the three governments have failed to address the post-NAFTA agenda.

Indeed, the three governments have been intimidated by parochial, antiglobalist

forces, and they have sought protection in private meetings with CEOs, thereby

provoking the very suspicion that the critics fear. The opposition parties in the

three countries have joined in the criticism – much of it unsubstantiated – and

have not offered constructive ideas.

Was NAFTA a failure? Leaving aside the excessive promises of its proponents,

NAFTA’s goals were to reduce and eventually eliminate trade and investment

barriers. On January 1, 2008, the final trade barriers on agricultural products

came down. And as a result, trade among the three countries has tripled – from

$289 billion in 1993 to $846 billion in 2006. Foreign direct investment has

quintupled, tying the economies closer together and forging continental firms. If

one measures success by whether the agreement achieved its declared goals, it

was a success.

But even on the issue of the effect on jobs, it would seem hard to make Ross

Perot’s case that the jobs all went south during the first seven years of NAFTA

when trade increased the fastest because in the United States, this was one of

the most dynamic periods of job creation – 22.7 million jobs, many in the

relatively higher-paying export sector. And in the last eight years, since China

joined the World Trade Organization, Mexico’s role as the second largest trading

partner for the United States has been overtaken by Asia’s new giant so NAFTA

can hardly be blamed for the loss of jobs to China.

Some critics fear that the governments are secretly conspiring to merge the three

countries into a North American Union. There is no truth to that fear, but it

disguises the real problem, which is that the governments are doing little, if

anything, about the many issues confronting them. The three leaders meet

periodically for photo-ops, as they will be doing in New Orleans on April 21-22,