While still in office, President Bill Clinton emerged from a meeting with 33 Western Hemisphere leaders and made an ambitious pledge. By 2005, he promised, a ''Free Trade Area of the Americas would stretch from Alaska to Argentina'' and ''will be the world's largest market.'' He had the idea of combining all trading blocks and emerging as one huge western connection. The question now remains, should the new President strive to accomplish the goal of Clinton? Would the combination of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the South American Common Market (MERCOSUR) be a good idea, or even possible? Would it be in our best interests to link ourselves in contract with not only Canada and Mexico but Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay as well? The answer is definitely yes. As it is now, NAFTA is starting to fail in many people's eyes. Though it has brought success to some, it has caused distress for most. The inclusion of the South American countries and the MERCOSUR ways could only make the United States more successful economically.
             To understand why things need to change in order to better our economy we must first know the background information. On January 1st, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, creating the world's largest free trade area. Among the main objectives is the liberalization of trade between Canada, Mexico and the United States, to stimulate economic growth and give the NAFTA countries equal access to each other's markets. Some of the promised benefits were 200,000 new U.S. jobs from NAFTA per year, higher wages in Mexico, a growing U.S. trade surplus with Mexico, environmental clean-up and improved health along the border. The most important feature of NAFTA that would benefit the people is employment and the promise that NAFTA would create hundreds of thousands of new, high paying jobs. There was also a promise that wages in Mexico would increase due t...