Too Much Credence to Scare Scenarios

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has thrown a significant roadblock in the way of the historic North American Free Trade Agreement among the United States, Mexico and Canada. But it need not be the land mine that kills the trade accord--if the Clinton Administration moves quickly to appeal the ruling and to reassure our neighbors that it still wants NAFTA and that Congress will eventually approve it.

In a ruling that gives too much credence to scare scenarios of extreme environmentalists, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Richey ordered the Administration to prepare an environmental impact statement on NAFTA before submitting the trade pact to Congress. Given the scope of NAFTA, which would lower tariffs and other trade barriers on all kinds of goods and services throughout North America, that could be a cumbersome and lengthy process. It would almost surely delay implementation of NAFTA, which all three governments had hoped to approve by the end of this year.

Of course, delaying NAFTA is just what the pact’s opponents--not just some environmentalists but rigidly protectionist labor unions--want. Having failed to kill the agreement outright, they hope to stall it to death. Three environmental groups were able to persuade Richey to go along with their tactic, convincing the judge that dubious assumptions about NAFTA’s negative effects on the environment, especially along the U.S.-Mexico border, are valid.

In fairness to Richey, the Bush Administration, which began the NAFTA negotiations, should have anticipated such legal challenges. The State Department routinely prepares environmental reports on trade agreements, and one should have been in the works for NAFTA long ago. But there remains the major question, which must be decided by higher courts, of how much environmental and other domestic U.S. laws can limit the President’s power to negotiate with foreign governments and otherwise conduct foreign policy.

Ultimately, the delaying tactics of NAFTA’s opponents are doomed. For the agreement is only an effort to regulate a process of international economic integration that is already under way--much to the benefit of California and other states heavily engaged in foreign trade--and that will not stop because a few political Luddites get in the way.

But Richey’s ruling, and the extreme opposition to NAFTA that it symbolizes, can cause problems in our short-term relations with Mexico. After decades of suspicion, a new generation of farsighted leaders, epitomized by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, is struggling to modernize that nation’s economy. President Clinton must not let them down by giving up on NAFTA. A more prosperous Mexico will benefit not just Mexicans but the United States, through trade and reduced immigration. It will even benefit the environment--because a prosperous Mexico can afford to be a cleaner Mexico.