NAFTA Made a Mexican the World’s Richest Man

Mexico City – Which country could give the son of a poor immigrant from an impoverished faraway land so many opportunities as to make him the world’s richest man? Mexico.

It is NAFTA’s most ironic of unintended consequences that Carlos Slim, the Mexican son of Arab immigrants, surpassed this month Bill Gates to become the world’s richest man.

When the Dow Jones closed above the 14,000 mark for the first time on July 19, 2007 Slim’s net worth was estimated to have exceeded $69.3 billion. By comparison, according to Forbes Magazine, Bill Gates is worth $59 billion and Warren Buffet a mere $52 billion. (Earlier this spring Forbes Magazine reported that Slim had replaced Buffet as the second-richest man, and believed he would surpass Gates within “a year.” This year’s bull market has given Slim a 28 percent surge in price of the stocks he owns.)

The story of how a Mexican is the wealthiest man on Earth is the story of how NAFTA’s limitations distort income distribution in both Mexico and the United States. In the early 1990s, when negotiations for NAFTA were underway, the United States and Mexico decided to exclude certain things for negotiation

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