The WaPo ran a Sunday cover story on NAFTA’s impact on Mexico as it takes full effect:

As NAFTA’s final provisions take effect next year, tying Mexico’s fortunes more tightly to world markets, how will its economy adjust? And how will the latest wave of trade liberalization alter the calculations for millions of Mexicans wanting to stay home, but constantly feeling the tug of the north?…

NAFTA did bring Mexico foreign investment. Jobs at its maquiladoras — export factories set up in the 1960s, mostly near the border — more than doubled from 540,000 to 1.13 million between 1993 and 2004. But in other factories, employment has slipped and average wages have dropped by 5 percent.

Economists emphasize that any assessment of NAFTA must include the financial crisis that savaged Mexico in 1994 and 1995, sowing unemployment. Some assert that without NAFTA and the exports it fueled, Mexico’s recovery would have been slower. Many also say that Mexico’s government squandered opportunities for growth by failing to improve highways and ports, and by leaving unchecked the monopoly power of the national telephone company, which has kept rates for Internet access and other telecommunication services high, discouraging new ventures…

“For people who can grow huge scale for export, NAFTA has been good,” he said. “For people like us, it’s been a bloodbath.”…

Feed amounts to nearly 60 percent of the cost of raising a chicken. For the American poultry industry, the cost has been held down, historically, by subsidies for corn production. In 2005, American cropland for corn received a range of subsidies worth more than $10 billion, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Labor, where Mexico has an advantage, makes up only about 5 percent of production costs.