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11 August 2009
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Obama Reverses Campaign Pledge To Renegotiate NAFTA

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President Obama has wrapped up a two-day visit to Mexico for talks with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The three leaders met in Guadalajara to discuss issues including immigration reform, trade, Mexico’s drug war, the crisis in Honduras, and the swine flu outbreak. It was Obama’s first official summit under the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. On the campaign trail, Obama had promised to open up NAFTA to re-negotiations. But he"s backed off that pledge since taking office, blaming the global economic meltdown.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Obama said: “At a time when the economy has been shrinking drastically and trade has been shrinking around the world… we probably want to make the economy more stabilized in the coming months before we have a long discussion around further trade negotiations.”

Obama’s reversal on NAFTA has come under criticism from labor and human rights groups. In Mexico, NAFTA has been blamed for squeezing out small Mexican farmers, depressing wages, and spurring waves of immigration to the United States. Before the summit, a group of protesters gathered at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and called on Obama to uphold his campaign pledge.

Manuel Perez Rocha, Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and a member of the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade.

Laura Carlsen, Director of the Americas Program at the International Releations Center. She has lived in Mexico many years and has published numerous articles on social and political issues in the country.

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