Last month we dealt with NAFTA’s ongoing success and potential for improvement. The conclusion suggested that, overall, on its 10th anniversary the North American Free Trade Agreement is meeting its original intent.

Some readers took exception with that conclusion. They claim NAFTA is a colossal failure in many respects, failing to provide a safe working environment and a living wage for Mexican workers, costing hundreds of thousands of American jobs and failing to protect the environment in Mexico.

Anyone can make an argument against anything — Utopia is only an ideal. NAFTA is not perfect, so it can be argued it is not good. By attributing to it responsibility for shortcomings that fall outside the legislation’s scope, the trade agreement is further accused of failures.

Many NAFTA accusers either willfully ignore or have no knowledge of the agreement’s purpose and laws outside its jurisdiction or the history of American job losses. They seem to believe labor and environmental laws are part of NAFTA, but only when it comes to Mexico — not the United States or Canada. They believe that American jobs lost are not offset by jobs created, and NAFTA, and only NAFTA, has cost the U.S. jobs. They ignore the wholesale loss of entire industries to other countries long before NAFTA existed.

When arguments like this are flying, it serves us well to step back and review the bidding. Long before Tijuana became the world capital of television assembly, the U.S. had lost the television manufacturing industry to Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. This trend began in the late 1960s, gaining momentum through the 1970s, and by the early 1980s the television manufacturing industry had virtually vanished from the United States. The same fate was met by most other consumer electronic/electrical products, such as radios and toasters.

The steel industry fared little better as Japan and Korea began to take significant market share. In the early 1970s, U.S. auto manufacturers’ employee parking lots contained growing numbers of foreign cars and the same trend was reflected on highways and streets. To survive, Detroit improved and made deals with foreign automakers.

In the 1950s Congress, using the motto “Trade not Aid,” created the Caribbean Basin Initiative. This allowed for U.S. companies to establish sewing operations in countries in the Caribbean, which included Central American countries with Caribbean sea coasts. Mexico was excluded other than Yucatan and Quintana Roo. (The CBI still exists and those countries are complaining that Mexico has gained the advantage through NAFTA.) The CBI and fierce competition from Far East nations were rapidly wiping out the clothing industry in the U.S., which today is nearly gone.

Mexico’s maquiladora industry went into effect in 1967 in an effort to create employment along the border. Mexican wages of the day, although lower than those in the United States, were higher than those paid in Taiwan, and close to the wages in Japan, so the industry didn’t grow significantly.

However, in the U.S., the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was created in 1971. OSHA imposed safety laws and mandated states to adopt them, but each state could pass its own as long as they were no less than the federal laws. In California, Cal-Osha was created with some of the most stringent safety and health workplace requirements in the nation — in most cases far in excess of federal laws.

California companies in many industries found Cal-Osha to be onerous and many of its mandates impractical. For instance, Los Angeles Plating had a major investment in automated chrome plating lines for automotive rims. The rims weighed more than 15 pounds each. Cal-Osha mandated the equipment that polished the rims before the plating was applied be outfitted with a guard that the operator had to hold open with one hand. But this was impossible because both hands were necessary to hold the heavy rim. Thus Los Angeles Plating was one of the first companies to install a maquiladora in Mexicali, Baja California, not to escape environmental responsibility, but to avoid the unworkable Cal-Osha requirements. The rims were polished in Mexicali and trucked back to Los Angeles to chrome plate where the company complied with the plating environmental mandates imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

In the 1980s Mexico’s peso so dramatically fell in value against the dollar that suddenly Mexican wages in dollars became lower than those in Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong. During that decade, U.S. companies began going to Mexico in large numbers — many leaving their Far East operations to do so. The driving force was cheaper labor.

Many companies saw an opportunity to avoid environmental and safety laws because some Mexican officials either did not have the expertise and manpower to police their own laws, or were paid to ignore such laws.

Still, the infamy of labor abuse and/or environmental degradation, through either lack of resources or corruption, is no less a crime. But the responsibility rests not on the maquiladora regime or on NAFTA. Rather, it falls squarely on those who break the laws. And of importance, the vast majority of companies comply with both labor and environmental regulations.

And lest we forget, the ultimate reason why jobs leave the U.S. lies squarely on the shoulders of consumers who choose the “bargain” over the U.S.-made product — and that is most of us.

Patrick Osio Jr. can be reached at posiojr@sandiegometro.com. The veteran consultant also has issued The Mexican Perspective, an intensive primer on business culture and protocol. Copies are available at http://www.hispanicvista.com/sales/book_sale.htm.