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Mexico Institute in the News: The Politics of Exports and Jobs

Christopher Wilson

Rick Santorum proposes negotiating several free trade agreements in the first year of Presidency, even though he was against the NAFTA back in 1993.

Truth About Trade & Technology, March 29, 2012

 

...The former senator from Pennsylvania will keep on talking about how to create jobs in an economy with an unemployment rate that floats above 8 percent.

One of the best ways is with exports–and Santorum should tell a positive story about how his own view on free trade has evolved from occasional skepticism to a full embrace of how much our economy benefits when goods and services flow across borders.

Santorum can start with what he’s proposing right now. On his 32-point economic plan, boosting exports is item no. 19: “Negotiate 5 Free Trade Agreements and submit to Congress in first year of Presidency.”...

...In 1993, Santorum came out against the North American Free Trade Agreement, in what the Club for Growth has described as “perhaps the most important free trade vote of the last generation.”

Santorum, who hails from the Pittsburg area, said he was worried about the fate of the steel industry. “NAFTA will produce pockets of winners and losers across the country,” he said. “Our area is unfortunately one of the losers.”

It wasn’t that simple–certainly not for Pennsylvania. The Keystone State currently exports more than $2 billion per year to Mexico, according to Christopher Wilson in “Working Together,” a report for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Almost a quarter of a million Pennsylvanians owe their jobs to the Mexican market. Metal manufacturing alone accounted for $467 million of Pennsylvania’s exports to Mexico last year...

 

Read full article here.

About the Author

Christopher Wilson

Christopher Wilson

Global Fellow, Mexico Institute
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Mexico Institute

The Mexico Institute seeks to improve understanding, communication, and cooperation between Mexico and the United States by promoting original research, encouraging public discussion, and proposing policy options for enhancing the bilateral relationship. A binational Advisory Board, chaired by Luis Téllez and Earl Anthony Wayne, oversees the work of the Mexico Institute.   Read more

Latin America Program

The Wilson Center’s prestigious Latin America Program provides non-partisan expertise to a broad community of decision makers in the United States and Latin America on critical policy issues facing the Hemisphere. The Program provides insightful and actionable research for policymakers, private sector leaders, journalists, and public intellectuals in the United States and Latin America. To bridge the gap between scholarship and policy action, it fosters new inquiry, sponsors high-level public and private meetings among multiple stakeholders, and explores policy options to improve outcomes for citizens throughout the Americas. Drawing on the Wilson Center’s strength as the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum, the Program serves as a trusted source of analysis and a vital point of contact between the worlds of scholarship and action.  Read more