Mexican Farmers See Opportunity to Renegotiate NAFTA After Trump

A group of Mexican farmer leaders and academics believe that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's pledge to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, will be a good opportunity to review areas of the treaty that are not favorable to the sector in Mexico.

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Experts say that after 23 years of its implementation, NAFTA, signed by Mexico, the United States and Canada in the early 90s, has helped dismantle Mexico's agricultural production system through neoliberal policies that have left millions of poor farmers without state support and have increased the country’s food dependency on aboard, La Jornada reported Tuesday.

Since his presidential campaign, Trump has vowed to force Canada and Mexico to negotiate the trade deal saying it has been detrimental to the manufacturing industry in the United States, sending shocking waves of uncertainty for the already weakened Mexican economy.

For Mexico, NAFTA was proclaimed by then-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the mastermind behind the agreement, as an opportunity to modernize the country and as a gateway to the first world.

In the years that have followed the NAFT signing, the Mexican government has sold itself as a pro-business and lower-cost alternative for U.S. companies and in the process became a manufacturing powerhouse of cars, computers, aerospace technology and televisions.

However, the modernization process also helped dismantle the national agricultural system, which has practically disappeared, according to analysts and producers.

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“Before the neoliberal economic model, there were public institutions in charge of productive processes, such as planting and the granting of machinery and equipment to farmers, but with NAFTA the Mexican state reduced its role in the agriculture industry and transferred the control to transnational companies and the private sector,” analyst Carlos Ricardo Menendez told La Jornada.

According to Menendez, by renegotiating NAFTA the Mexican government has the opportunity to rebuild its commodity storage and marketing system; guarantee a fair price for farmers and increase the use of irrigation water and revitalize the development bank that granted credits to small and medium farmers.

Following Trump's victory, the Mexican government said it was ready to "modernize" the three-countries-trade deal with the United States if the real estate mogul follows through on his vows regarding U.S. protectionist policies, however, the agricultural sector has not been mentioned at all by Mexican officials.