MEXICO CITY, June 20 (Xinhua) -- Nobel Prize winner and renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz said Monday it would be "extraordinarily foolish" for the United States to walk away from or weaken the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Speaking at the 18th World Congress of the International Economic Association in Mexico, Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia University in New York, said the United States should instead try to expand its trade ties with Canada and Mexico, its NAFTA partners.
U.S. President Donald Trump has criticized NAFTA as unfairly benefiting Mexico at the expense of American jobs and industry, and called for a renegotiation of the accord that entered into force in 1994.
Mexico and the United States, which share a 2,000-mile (roughly 3,200-km) border, maintain a natural economic integration largely thanks to NAFTA, which has allowed both sides to thrive, said Stiglitz.
"The interdependence of the United States and Mexico is very good and it would be extraordinarily foolish of the Trump administration to distance itself from NAFTA, to undermine NAFTA," Stiglitz told reporters covering the congress.
The three countries may renegotiate the trade agreement as early as August, as part of Trump's efforts to fulfill his campaign pledge to secure a better deal for U.S. workers by ditching the treaty that he called a "disaster."
However, he has softened his stance since then, saying that he would "not terminate" the pact after he had phone conversations with leaders from Mexico and Canada in April.
Stiglitz said the "ugly rhetoric" of the campaign trail has given way to a growing awareness of the importance of bilateral partnership for the economy.
"I am less concerned now about NAFTA's fate," said Stiglitz, "because I think politics in the United States has evolved in a positive way."
At the conference, Mexico's Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade told the dozens of economists gathered there that the economies of Mexico and the United States complemented each other.
Mexico is the emerging economy with the largest investment from the United States, and the first or second biggest trade partner of 29 out of 50 states in the United States.
