Trade barriers hurt U.S., Mexico

Amid all the talk about the new Europe and trade problems with Japan, there is a great need to look in our own backyard - especially Mexico.

Two recent events underscore the importance of doing this. First was the announcement that the United States and Mexico have agreed to negotiate a free-trade pact similar to the U.S.-Canada pact implemented last year.

The three nations of North America, not the 12 nations of the European Community, make up the world's largest, richest, youngest and - when measured by natural resources - best-endowed emerging trading partners. Japan is second.

Two pieces of a North American common market already are in place through the U.S.-Canada agreement. Adding Mexico, whose per-capita wealth is higher than Poland's, would complete the picture.

Trade between the U.S. and Mexico totaled about $52 billion last year. The Mexican market is the fastest-growing of the top 10 U.S. export markets.

Along the border 1,450 maquiladoras (twin plants) employ 400,000 people and add about $2 billion annually to the Mexican economy.

A free-trade pact with Mexico would be a giant step toward increasing trade and expanding wealth on both sides of the border.

It is, perhaps, no accident that the agreement was reached on the American side by westerners. Both Commerce Secretary Robert
Mosbacher and Secretary of State James Baker, and the president they serve, are from Texas. The saliency of U.S.-Mexico relations is higher in the West than in the rest of the country.

The second event is the recent publication of a book by another Texan, Sidney Weintraub. The former diplomat is a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.

Weintraub's Marriage of Convenience: Relations between Mexico and the United States, paints a picture of two nations inextricably intertwined. More than one-third of Mexico's loans are from U.S. banks. More than 60% of Mexico's exports go to the U.S.

Weintraub sees the need for the two countries to increasingly complement each other. Huge numbers of Mexicans seek and find employment in the U.S., where labor shortages are a growing problem. The U.S. depends increasingly on Mexican oil. Mexico needs U.S. capital, technology and know-how. The two nations share concerns on water and environmental issues.

Bringing down the barriers that separate Mexico from the U.S. and Canada should be a priority - not only for government leaders in Washington, Ottawa and Mexico City, but also for civic and business leaders in Denver and Los Angeles, Toronto and Calgary and Monterrey and Chihuahua.

Mexico's place in North America is too important to be left to the politicians. Mexico matters.