The Post-NAFTA Political Economy: Mexico and the Western Hemisphere. CAROL WISE (ed.): Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998.

Abstract

Promises filled the air during the honeymoon years of trade liberalization in the early 1990s. Announcing his Enterprise for the Americas Initiative (EAI) in 1990, President George Bush proclaimed, "prosperity in our hemisphere depends on trade, not aid...the future of Latin America lies with free government and free markets." Likewise, a Mexico trade official lobbying for the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1991 asked critics of the agreement to "just imagine how Mexico could help the U.S. economy recover when our own economy improves, and with it the standard of living of Mexicans." On the other side of the debate, critics of the NAFTA, and any other hemispheric free trade initiatives, promised, among other things, a "giant sucking sound."