The NAFTA debate that's not happening

For a hot minute, our country actually had a debate about NAFTA over the last couple weeks, thanks to sparring between the Clinton and Obama campaigns heading into this week's Ohio and Texas primaries.

As columnist David Sirota points out, the debate wasn't particularly heavy on substance. But it was refreshing to see at least some discussion over a set of policies which have caused, on net, the loss of some 900,000 U.S. jobs and helped decimate manufacturing in Southern states like North Carolina and Texas.

But for all the talk about the world being flat and the need to think globally, this election season's NAFTA mini-debate was surprisingly U.S.-centric and parochial. In a short but excellent piece, Bill Fletcher of Black Commentator observes that NAFTA's impact beyond U.S. borders has been nearly totally ignored:

What is critical for us to grasp on this side of the Rio Grande River is that NAFTA has had a devastating impact on the Mexican economy. Through forcing the Mexican farmer to compete with USA farmers, rural Mexico's economy has been turned upside down. The reality is that the Mexican farmer has been unable to compete, and as a result there began - in the mid 1990s - a migration of rural Mexicans into the larger Mexican cities. Finding few job opportunities, the migration moved north toward the USA. This was accompanied by the impact of NAFTA on the Mexican public sector, which also suffered severe body blows, thereby undermining what little social safety net the people of Mexico had.

Taking a global view on global deals like NAFTA not only makes sense -- that's the whole point, right? -- but Fletcher observes that it also helps us better understand that other hot-button political topic, immigration:

This side of the NAFTA equation is critical to discuss because it helps us understand why hundreds of thousands of Mexicans chose to leave their homes and head north. Contrary to the xenophobic, anti-immigrant rhetoric many of us have heard, it was not because "everyone wants to be in America" but rather as a direct result of policies initiated by the USA and their allies in Ottawa and Mexico City.

Maybe Tom Friedman needs to spend some time in Chiapas.