Mexico City/Washington  - The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is completing 15 years as an economic crisis, with its epicentre in the United States, has shaken its three pillars: commerce, investment and employment.

The anniversary coincides with the worst moment in several decades for the world economy, and as the White House is set to be occupied by Barack Obama, a fierce critic of NAFTA during the US presidential campaign who has pledged to renegotiate it.

The pact between the United States, Mexico and Canada - the flagship of several free-trade agreements in Latin America - took effect January 1, 1994 when Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Bill Clinton were presidents of Mexico and the US.

Since then, trade between the three countries has tripled, reaching 894.3 billion dollars in 2007, according to official data. The US accounts for 80 per cent of Mexican exports, and Mexico became an appetizing preferential market of 105 million inhabitants for US products.

The statistics tell a success story: US-Mexico trade alone quadrupled; US and European companies established bases in Mexico for exports to the north; investment flowed; competition improved.

Even so, other sectors felt the blow: Mexican peasant farmers faced high-tech, subsidized competition; US workers lost jobs to cheaper labour south of the border.

Joined together for better or worse, the economic difficulties in the US now augur for Mexico a significant reduction in exports, a shrinking growth rate projected at less than
0.5 per cent in 2009 and a loss of jobs, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

During the US presidential campaign, Obama several times called for a revision of the pact and renegotiation with Mexico and Canada to include labour and environmental demands.

"I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labour and environmental standards that are enforced," he said during a February debate.

The then-senator from Illinois said the treaty caused the loss of thousands of US manufacturing jobs, especially in some key electoral states.

Nevertheless, since winning the election, Obama has never once mentioned the term NAFTA, not even when he announced that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson would become his Secretary of Commerce.

The choice of Richardson might indicate that NAFTA is safe for the moment. The Democrat of Mexican ethnicity, who also ran for the White House, stood apart from campaign rivals who attacked the treaty that he himself had helped to get approved in Congress during the early 1990s.

After dropping out of the race, Richardson embraced Obama and downplayed the latter's earlier criticisms of NAFTA and free trade.

"One has to look at how he voted," he said in June, pointing to Obama's support in the Senate for a new US-Peru trade deal.

For the government of Mexico, headed by the conservative Felipe Calderon, the mere possibility that the US could propose to renegotiate the treaty provoked alarm.

"If the free trade benefits are cancelled, it will effectively cancel many opportunities for employment and growth, for both North Americans and Mexicans," Calderon told the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in November.

For Calderon to support protectionist measures in the current context would also be political suicide.

"Renegotiating NAFTA is a bad idea," he said, arguing that the idea was "not to renegotiate for more markets and more trade, but in fact for less market and less trade.

"That is why I know, and why I hope that the next US government will not make that mistake," he said. "I sense that there will be sufficient talent and common sense in the next administration. At least, I hope so." (dpa)