The Selling of "Free Trade"; NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy

New York, N.Y.: Hill and Wang, 2000. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Sugrud Estrada (Author photograph). xii, 388 pages. Includes Acknowledgments and Index. Also includes chapters on Death of a Factory: Long Island City; The True Believers; Clinton Antes Up; The Democratic Party, Inc.; Buying the Pot; The Payoff; Comparative Advantage: Nogales. John R. "Rick" MacArthur (born June 4, 1956) is an American journalist and author of books about US politics. He is the president of Harper's Magazine. MacArthur graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in history in 1978. In 2017 he was named a chevalier in the French order of arts and letters. MacArthur writes a monthly column, in French, for Le Devoir on a wide range of topics from politics to culture and is a regular contributor to the Spectator (U.K.), the Toronto Star, Le Monde Diplomatique and Le Monde. In 1980, John R. MacArthur persuaded the foundation to partner in creating and funding a Harper's Magazine Foundation to acquire and operate the magazine of the same name. This new entity acquired Harper's Magazine (which was then losing nearly $2 million per year and was on the verge of ceasing publication) for $250,000. He became president and publisher of Harper's Magazine in 1983. In 1993 he received the Baltimore Sun's H. L. Mencken Writing Award for best editorial/op-ed column for his New York Times exposé of "Nayirah", the Kuwaiti diplomat's daughter who helped fake the Iraqi baby-incubator atrocity. He received the Philolexian Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement in 2009. This brilliant expose shows how Washington works to make something happen, even when confronted with widespread popular opposition. It chronicles the brutal and expensive campaign in 1993 that led to passage of the poorly understood, highly controversial law creating the North American Free Trade Agreement. Derived from a review posted on-line: MacArthur takes as his example the story of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed between the US, Mexico and Canada in 1993. At face value, this treaty was a standard piece of modern deal-making to aid international commerce, of interest then and since to transatlantic think tanks and especially keen students of American politics such as Iain Duncan Smith. Officially, the agreement established a single market between the three countries, similar to that in Europe, to the benefit of rich and poor alike across the north American continent. Jobs would be created in America. Mexico would get wealthier. Profits would rise everywhere. In the words of Lee Iacocca, the famous car salesman hired to advertise the benefits of NAFTA on American television, "It's a no-brainer." In fact, as with globalization in general, there would be distinct winners and losers. The commercial union of a poor, loosely governed, populous country such as Mexico with two of the world's most prosperous nations would provide wide-ranging possibilities for closing factories in America and Canada and reopening them to the south, where cheap labor could be obtained and regulations of all kinds could be evaded. The best parts of this book focus on a single factory in New York, describing what happened when its owners, seeing the opportunity created by NAFTA, suddenly moved it across the Mexican border.