Why Renegotiate NAFTA?
The mainstream press is wrong when it says the United States can’t “unilaterally” call for renegotiation. Not only is renegotiation permitted legally — in fact, any country can unilaterally withdraw with six months notice — but there have been many calls for renegotiation in Canada and Mexico. Canadians have built a strong grassroots movement to protect natural resources from predatory NAFTA clauses. Broad-based citizen groups like the Council of Canadians oppose NAFTA because of the energy proportionality clause that requires Canada to export oil to the United States even in times of scarcity, the investor-state clauses that give investors the right to sue governments contained in Chapter 11, and the clause that permits bulk-water exports. Polls in the general population show that 61% favor renegotiation. In Mexico, 100,000 people marched in the streets on two separate occasions under the banner of renegotiation to revise NAFTA’s agricultural provisions. They demanded protection of
