NAFTA is the North American Free Trade Agreement. In the 1990′s the United States, Canada, and Mexico negotiated NAFTA, which removed tariffs and other barriers to trade. The agreement makes trade between the three nations of North America mega-easy and is intended to generate trillions of dollars of revenue every year.
Posts Tagged ‘Mexico’
NAFTA is…
Thursday, July 21st, 2011$74 Billion Still Buys an Awful Lot…
Thursday, March 24th, 2011
(photo credit: clagnut)
Carlos Slim (is that really his real name? Googling… his real name is Carlos Slim Helú, which is still kind of funny) is officially the richest man in the world, with a net worth of $74 billion.
That’s more than 6% of Mexico’s entire GDP!
But being the world’s richest man in a country as poor as Mexico isn’t easy on your rep. Unlike Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, America’s wealthiest citizens, Slim hasn’t really focused on philanthropy.
Which led Cyntia Barrera Diaz from Reuters to ask, “What could you pay for with that kind of scratch?”
Here are some gems from the list she came up with:
- - Enough tortillas for all 112 million Mexican citizens for 11 years
- - NASA’s total budget for the next four years
- - Mexico’s entire public education budget for ten years
- - 1,617 25-carat pink diamonds
What does Carlos think about giving away his money?
“Wealth is like an orchard. You have to share the fruit, not the trees.”
What would YOU do with $74 billion?
For Migrants To The U.S., A Deadly Journey
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010Hernando Maquin, a 24 year old father, is the most recent in a pattern of migrant murders plaguing Central America.
- The Mexican government declared war on the country’s powerful drug cartels in 2006, but the war is far from over. Drug gangs have branched out into human trafficking – profitable for traffickers and extremely dangerous for humans.
- People – mostly men – from countries like El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras have long risked their lives to travel to America for work. They typically leave impoverished families at home, who depend on their financial support while they are away. That’s assuming they survive the trip to the U.S. and find work without being deported.
- Illegal migrants are particularly vulnerable, as they must navigate an underworld of traffickers with no police or government protection. Maquin left his pregnant wife in Guatemala to find work in America along with two in-laws. His body was found along with the bodies of 71 other Central and South American migrants in an empty ranch in Tamaulipas, Mexico – about 90 miles from the U.S. border.
Facts & Figures
- Since 2006, 28,000 people have been killed in Mexico’s drug war.
- Migrants can pay “coyotes,” as traffickers are called, up to $10,000 to be smuggled into the U.S.
- There are approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in America.
Best Quote
“We were praying for them. We were worried about floods, and by the fact they had no money and no food. But we never thought this would happen.” A relative of Maquin, kept anonymous for protection