Posted on 12/14/2002 6:01:24 AM PST by madfly
Mexican farm workers, or campesinos, have taken to the streets in recent weeks in fury over the idea of American chickens being divided and served in two different nations.
As officials prepare to implement the next phase of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), Mexican farmers fear that lifting the 45 per cent tariff on poultry and a 2 to 20 per cent tariff on pork will wipe out domestic industries.
The US penchant for chicken breasts leaves an excess of chicken legs and thighs that are expected to be sent across the border - at half the price of Mexican poultry. The tariff reductions were agreed 10 years ago under Nafta, which set off an explosion in agricultural trade. Mexican exports to the US were $6.7bn last year, while its imports from the US were $7.9bn.
The $1bn difference would disappear if US grain used for animal feed were removed from the equation or if Mexico's $900m in shrimp exports were added. Behind the statistics, however, is a recognition that large agribusiness has benefited on both sides of the border, while family farmers who sell to domestic markets are finding it hard to compete.
Among the thousands of protesters in Mexico City this month was Rogelio Ruelas, a pig farmer from the northern city of Chihuahua.
The farmers rallied outside the US embassy and let cows amble on streets leading to the Mexican Congress, asking for dialogue, greater funding for rural development and a delay in the lifting of tariffs.
"One more year isn't sufficient, we need at least three. But one year's delay is what we're asking for now."
Mr Ruelas switched from producing grain last year after having problems selling it against subsidised US imports, whose price is below the cost of production. He is instead using his grain as forage for a herd of 20 pigs.
"But now I've got the same problem," he said, standing amid a crowd outside the agriculture ministry. "Now that there's going to be meat coming in from the US, there's no business. There's nowhere to sell my product."
Mr Ruelas is among the one-quarter of Mexicans reliant on a rural agricultural system hindered by a lack of credit, investment and technology.
The issue is potentially explosive for the reformist government of President Vicente Fox - and he has taken steps to mollify protesters blocking highways throughout the country.
In recent weeks, Mr Fox has authorised $10bn in new rural aid, compensated farmers for crops lost to drought, and cut electricity prices for agricultural businesses for four years.
He has also grown less diplomatic with the US. When Colin Powell, US secretary of state, visited Mexico City last week, Mr Fox told him that US farm subsidies could lead to a damaging new influx of immigration as impoverished Mexican farmers headed north.
With congressional mid-term elections set for July, the issue could inflict severe political damage on Mr Fox's National Action party. Opposition politicians in Mexico - including members of the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI), whose leaders signed Nafta - are calling for a renegotiation of the treaty.
Rosario Robles, a former Mexico City mayor and leader of the leftwing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which holds the balance of power in Congress and controls several state governments, said last week that party funds would help finance protests. Threatened actions include blockades of US imports at 48 border points next month.
There is little or no chance, however, that the US will reopen a treaty signed freely almost a decade ago. "If you start to give exemptions or start allowing for deadlines to slip then you really don't have a free trade agreement," said JB Penn, undersecretary for agriculture, during a visit to Mexico.
Mexican relations with the US are already strained by the failure of the Bush administration to make progress on an accord giving legal rights to an estimated 3.5m undocumented Mexican workers - many of them in the agricultural and service sectors.
Mr Penn readily conceded that the Mexican pork and poultry sectors will be hard-pressed to survive. But he pointed out that Nafta had benefited labour-intensive industries, such as fruit and horticultural products. Food-processing industries have also benefited.
Luis de la Calle, one of the negotiators of Nafta, suggested that Mexican labour would gravitate towards the work, wherever it was located. "The entire chicken industry in the US is manned by Mexicans," he said. "And it's a good combination since the US has the grain and we have the labour."
But some campesinos seem unenthusiastic about heading north of the border. Mr Ruelas, who worked in agriculture in Texas during the 1980s, says he is too old to do it again. "I'm planning to carry on fighting here in Mexico," he said, "producing so that I can keep making progress, here in my country." Additional reporting by Jorge Melchor
More NAFTA fallout.
What “accord” and by whose authority – the United Nations and other foreign groups? Rep. Jim Kolbe says NAFTA has nothing to do with Agenda 21 or Borders XX1...could he be wrong? *~*
Let's hope this man is a good leader and becomes one of a multitude.
To change the status of these criminals, what could Mexico possibly put on the table? They'll agree to about anything, then reneg on what they agreed to. The Mexican and the North Koreans and Yasir Arafat are very much alike in this regard.
The average Mexican citizen didn't make the NAFTA agreement just like the American citizens didn't. The deals were made at the top. The Mexican politicians had it in their plans all along to get rid of the campesinos ---but there's one thing they never counted on ---some don't want to leave Mexico and become some day laborer in the US or someone's meek gardener. Mexican politicians can't understand love of country or patriotism, every Mexican ex-president packs up and leaves Mexico when their term is over because all they care to do with Mexico is raid it and then leave.
Let's hope this man is a good leader and becomes one of a multitude.
Like us he probably feels like he's peeing in the wind but he knows what is right and is going to stand his ground.
Wake up Mexico! The UN doesn't give a rats heiny about the little people! They aren't trying to raise you up to our level they are bringing us down to yours. They want global control through universal peonship.
Tequila industry warns subsidy cuts could choke sector
TheNewsMexico.com - 12/14/2002
Mexico's tequila industry could slip into deep crisis after Congress voted this week to reduce subsidies to the sector, the Tequila Regulatory Council (CRT) told AFP on Friday.
"The subsidy reduction will have an impact on tequila companies' profits," said CRT Director Ramon Gonzales.
Legislators slashed tequila industry subsidies 25 percent as negotiations on the 2003 budget package continue in the Chamber of Deputies. The government will cut its subsidy to Tequila manufacturers from six to 4.50 pesos for every kilo of "Tequilana Weber" blue agave consumed. The agave plant is the raw material essential in tequila production.
Although agave prices are currently falling, both the plant's growers and tequila producers "aren't in as good a position as they were in three or four years ago," said Gonzalez.
The CRT announced last Thursday the tequila industry had begun to recuperate after smoothing out price differences in Mexican and U.S. markets.
Six months ago, a bottle of tequila in Mexico cost an average 23 dollars, while the same bottle cost 18 dollars in the United States.
"Today the prices to consumer [in Mexico] have been leveled out with those in the U.S.," Gonzales said.
Gonzales warned that the subsidy reduction would stifle any upswing in the industry.
The subsidy cutback came as part of the changes made in the Federal Revenue Law, passed Thursday in the lower house.
Industry sources said the change took tequila producers by surprise.
Reducing subsidies will put pressure on prices, and the sector will be expected to modify its sales projections for 2003.
The current price of "Tequilana Weber" blue agave is 14 pesos per kilo (1.40 dollars), though in 1999 it was priced as high as 80 centavos (.80 dollars).
Last year Mexico produced 170 million liters of tequila, 98 million liters of which were for export.
The United States made up the primary market for tequila, taking in 82 percent of Mexico's exports, while Europe bought 11 percent of total exports.
http://www.thenewsmexico.com/noticia.asp?id=42113
Canada also has job protection provisions in NAFTA..only the US thinks workers are expendable
That is just what they got..we get their illegals and they get our chicken legs and auto plants ..sounds fair to Washington
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