Proponents of new trade agreements that build on NAFTA, such as the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), have frequently claimed that such deals create jobs and raise incomes in the United States. As a result, NAFTA tilted the economic playing field in favor of investors, and against workers and the environment, resulting in a hemispheric “race to the bottom” in wages and environmental quality. Furthermore, no protections were contained in the core of the agreement to maintain labor or environmental standards. NAFTA is a free trade and investment agreement that provided investors with a unique set of guarantees designed to stimulate foreign direct investment and the movement of factories within the hemisphere, especially from the United States to Canada and Mexico. In fact, NAFTA has also contributed to rising income inequality, suppressed real wages for production workers, weakened workers’ collective bargaining powers and ability to organize unions, and reduced fringe benefits. The loss of these jobs is just the most visible tip of NAFTA’s impact on the U.S. Most of those lost jobs were high-wage positions in manufacturing industries. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico through 2002 has caused the displacement of production that supported 879,280 U.S. We have seized contraband, we have registered a case and when you register a case you have to arrest the driver who was carrying it, according to our laws,” Singh said, adding it was wrong for Pakistan to stop all movement across Kashmir.Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in 1993, the rise in the U.S. He said the almonds were meant for a businessman in Bandipora on the Indian side of Kashmir and that police were carrying out raids to hunt drug smugglers. Singh said the seizure was the largest contraband haul since cross-border trade began across the heavily militarised Line of Control in 2008, and estimated that it could be worth 1 billion Indian rupees ($16.17 million) on the international market. The latest row erupted on Friday when Indian police impounded a truck coming from Chakoti on the Pakistan side of Kashmir and arrested its driver saying they had found 114 packets of heroin concealed in a cargo of almonds.ĭeputy Police Inspector General J.P. “It is indeed surprising that Pakistan chose to hold hostage trans-LoC trade and travel bringing immense humanitarian benefits to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, for the sake of persons indulging in drug trafficking,” Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said, referring to the Line of Control dividing Kashmir.īoth Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif, who took power last year, are keen to rebuild ties and diplomats say closer integration of Pakistan with India’s giant economy could lay the ground for improving political relations. The spat, which comes after the two sides agreed on Saturday to allow round-the-clock movement of trucks and containers through their main border crossing further south in Punjab, underlines the fragility of the peace process. The two nuclear-armed countries have fought two wars over Kashmir but had sought to ease access and commerce in a region at the heart of more than 60 years of hostility. Pakistan halted cross-border trade and bus travel across the Himalayan region after the seizure last week, and on Tuesday New Delhi summoned Pakistan’s acting envoy in protest. SRINAGAR, India, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Efforts by India and Pakistan to increase trade and ease tension in disputed Kashmir have suffered a blow with Indian police saying they had seized more than 100 kg (220 lb) of heroin concealed in a truck full of nuts coming from the Pakistan side.
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