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In this century Mexico has had the slowest per capita GDP growth of any country in Latin America. It has made almost no progress in reducing poverty and it is plagued by drug gangs and corruption. But Thomas Friedman sees a Mexico that doesn’t show up in the data:
“In India, people ask you about China, and, in China, people ask you about India: Which country will become the more dominant economic power in the 21st century? I now have the answer: Mexico.”
How does he come to this conclusion? Well one of the big factors in Friedman’s story is that wages for workers in Mexico are falling behind wages elsewhere:
“with massive cheap natural gas finds, and rising wage and transportation costs in China, and it is no surprise that Mexico now is taking manufacturing market share back from Asia.”
While Mexico might not do well by standard economic measures, Friedman points out that it does very well when it comes to signing trade agreements;
“Mexico has signed 44 free trade agreements — more than any country in the world — which, according to The Financial Times, is more than twice as many as China and four times more than Brazil.”
In this same vein, Friedman excitedly quotes the Financial Times:
“Today, Mexico exports more manufactured products than the rest of Latin America put together.”
Let’s assume this is true. Much of what Mexico exports are products like cars where it imports most of the parts. These are then assembled in Mexico and exported back to the United States. This assembly doesn’t add much to Mexico’s economy, but if for some reason you think that exports by themselves are a measure of economic success, you can score big through this route.
After telling readers that people in Mexico use Twitter, Friedman then comments that U.S. companies are investing more in Mexico, “which is one reason Mexico grew last year at 3.9 percent.” Friedman apparently doesn’t realize that 3.9 percent was not an especially rapid growth rate for Latin America last year.
Just to ensure a regional balance, Friedman managed to overstate the cost of the war in Afghanistan by a factor three telling readers that:
“We do $1.5 billion a day in trade with Mexico, and we spend $1 billion a day in Afghanistan. Not smart.”
Yes, the war in Afghanistan may not be smart, but CBO puts the price tag at less than $100 billion in 2013.
Anyhow, it is easy to see why the NYT runs Thomas Friedman’s columns. He gives you all sorts of information that you would never find anywhere else.
Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economy and Policy Research. He also writes a regular blog, Beat the Press, where this post originally appeared.
Photo by Charles Haynes under Creative Commons license
17 Comments
Rising costs of transportation, and damages to ports from storms that are increasingly destructive, also have made Mexican imports to the States less expensive than those from that other continent.
Targeting Friedman again? How many times are you going to shoot the same fish in that barrel?
It’s hardly sporting.
Targeting Dr. Baker for pointing out facts wrt writing that generally avoids them again?
/raps
i got a lexus, and an olive tree
a column in the Times, you can’t beat me!
i’m so smart
i will start
fellating job creators from my condo richee.
cause they pay me baby
and you can’t make me
make any sense
or share my wife’s cents
with bunch of lame Little People who don’t matter in DC
like me, bitches.
It’d be one thing if Friedman was content to be the trophy spouse of the Singer heiress. But he’s considered a Serious Person and so gets to control what goes into the media your coworkers (and friends, and relatives) and mine see every day.
My comment was intended as a barbed joke, but it’s not surprising that you don’t get it. I know what it is like(was like, in my case) to live in your world.
A world where one can afford to travel to Greece and dig up mushrooms so one can post a recipe on the Internet when one gets back, for example. Or a comfortable world where one can expose the fallacies of one’s rivals and be taken at least somewhat seriously by one’s peers, as Baker did in his post.
I’m not saying he’s wrong, nor am I saying that Friedman does not deserve criticism. I am saying that neither you nor Dean Baker can possibly have any real understanding of the world in which I and mine live. I do not trust either one of you to improve it for me, either.
We have different self-interests, that’s all. Different class interests, too, but I won’t go into that, not on this thread, anyway.
Considered a Serious Person? Friedman? Nice try, but that’s just funny. As for most of my coworkers and relatives, you make a presumption. They’ve never heard of Friedman. They might lament the loss of 30 Rock, or describe the whole history of American Idol in detail, or gloat about how much they spaved at Wal-Mart or Costco, but they don’t know what either you or I are talking about.
And most probably voted for Romney and McCain. Most do think Obama’s some kind of socialist and that government spending is bad even when they work for the government.
You overestimate them.
To be fair, they don’t understand me, either. They’re just shocked that my white family and I live in a predominantly black neighborhood and have never been the victims of a crime.
Thanks for the gallows humor, Dean Baker. Hardly anything much to laugh about these days, especially not for the Greeks and their like, but I appreciate it.
So when can we expect Friedman to expatriate since he loves Mexico and all so much and thinks it is the next big thing since sliced bread?
Anything that pertains to North America and in particular, the Latin America Region, garners my attention. Thus, I can quibble with, not with what Dean Baker writes, but in ‘how he says it.”
And since I have spent a considerable amount of my life in the Region and in Mexico, Friedman is wrong, for a large number of reasons, and our good budd as well here at the MyFDL, Ohio Barbarian is far more “correct” than he realizes. To wit, Mexico is far from being the next best thing to sliced bread.
In closing, until Card Check is embedded in our NAFTA as the “missing” Labor Standard, and to the extent that Mexico’s Middle Class exists, wages and salaries will continue to fall, thus, far more in-migration from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala, will continue at perhapas, an even greater pace, and of course, the Fourth Estate will never address this issue or until the U.S. Chamber of Commerce relents or “permits” the Fourth Estate to report accordingly.
Jaango
Friedman and Brooks must be Butt Buddies. They both subscribe to the same fantasy financial and economic theories.
I’m not sure that screeching “hey look, brown people available to exploit for pennies on the dollar” can be called economic theory as much as it should be called encouraging disgustingly greedy behavior.
I hope you realize I meant no affront to the citizens of Mexico. I visited Tijuana frequently when stationed in San Diego. The people there that I met struck me as nice even as I saw pockets of poverty. It saddened me when the Mexican President made the statement that it was essentially America’s responsibility to find jobs for his people. It struck me that HE had abdicated his responsibility. I actually would not be adverse to seeing some jobs go there but I really don’t want it to be because Friedman and his ilk think they can exploit another portion of the world. Of course, I am also heartened because unlike Friedman I happen to know from my history books that Latinos have a solid history of organizing and of solidarity with the Labor movement. I think massive efforts to export business there would end up like in other places with the resource market demanding a larger cut and business looking for yet another region to exploit. I guess the sooner they run out of regions to exploit, the better for us all.
cwaltz,
Your comment was not taken as a slight or a perjorative, given that Mexico’s political system “sees” our immigration reform as their “escape valve” and perhaps, leading to Mexico’s anarchy for the political elites’ failure to address and develop a sizable and substantive Middle Class, shen it comes to the ballot box.
Now, off onto a tangent and relative to “history.”
For those of us and who have considerable experience in the Region as well as Mexico, we- the self-designated “experts” and familiar with the language, culture and customs, advanced the “idea” that a $5 billion annual allocation by Congress via the State Department’s budget and delivered to America’s municipalities for having “adopted” a Mexican municipality, would lead to substantive economic progress by both affective municipalities. Thus, this cross-border initiative, would have considerable “off-shoots” such as a greater social and governmental transparency, a reduction in crime and for a greater lattitude for politicians willing to address the “problems” plaguing both nations, from drug cartels and to law enforcement living off their high dollar-complicit behavior.
Unfortunately, here in the United States, Anglo America’s political elite refused to “listen” and thusly, demographic trends in the years ahead, will bring back this “idea” with far greater impact.
Jaango
Poor little Tommy. Without a Singapore cab driver to tell him what’s what, he doesn’t have a clue.
Baker is T-bogg with better vocabulary and a degree.
Friedman ate the deer peyote from the Sierra Madre delSurdel sol and thought it was part of the dinner salad or a rif on guacamole dip. All he saw was what the Conquistadors wanted him to see.