With some other people in the Global Studies program, we went to an event where the ex-president of Mexico was speaking. Vicente Fox is rather known to be rather outspoken against the Trump administration when it comes to building the wall. I was told that numerous amounts of times, so I believed he would speak more about current international relations, but the topic he spoke about was so much more informative. He spoke to the NAFTA agreement and the rise of nationalism over Mexico and U.S relations breaking down, which I expected. To be quite honest, I had no idea about what NAFTA was, but I he explained it so well, I felt like an expert after hearing him speak. I think that he had a great point about using trade and ‘open borders’ to decrease immigration and stabilize countries and economies. I thought that it was a rather brilliant solution that hasn’t been talked about much and it makes quite a bit of sense. The only issue I had with his talk of opening up trade across borders was monopolies and similar issues. If a country produces far more than another, it won’t be an entirely fair deal and the country that doesn’t produce enough can be taken advantage of. Furthermore, competition is good for advancement, but it also leaves the losers in the dirt. Personally, I believe that his idea is correct, but I can see the other side of the argument when looking at national interest. After all, being self-sustainable is incredibly good for a country as they wouldn’t be as influenced by external forces. I can definitely see things going sour in such relationships. I thought that Vicente Fox was well spoken and I really liked his statistic of the proportion of the U.S dollar to the Mexican Peso as an evidence. I wonder what he would say about immigration not stemming from the desire to increase wealth, but about refugees that will come from climate change and violence and how the NAFTA agreement would help with that. 

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