The celebrations of NAFTA's 10th anniversary are far more muted than those involved in its creation might have hoped. In the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement has failed to fulfill the most dire warnings of its opponents and the most fervent expectations of its supporters. In Mexico, however, the treaty remains controversial and even harmful—as do America's efforts to liberalize trade throughout the hemisphere. There is some good news. In America, the 'giant sucking sound of jobs being pulled out of this country' that Ross Perot predicted never quite materialized. The first six years of NAFTA saw unemployment in the United States fall to new lows. NAFTA has brought some benefits to Mexico as well it was trade with-America, fueled by NAFI'A, not the bailout of Wall Street lenders, that was responsible for Mexico's quick recovery after the financial crisis of December 1994. But while Mexico benefited in the early days, especially with exports from factories near the United States border, those benefits have waned, both with the weakening of the American economy and intense competition from China. Meanwhile, poor Mexican corn farmers face an uphill battle competing with highly subsidized American corn, while relatively better-off Mexican city dwellers benefit from lower corn prices. Growth in Mexico over the past 10 years has been a bleak 1 percent on a per capita basis—better than in much of the rest of Latin America, but far poorer than earlier in the century. From 1933 to 1948, Mexico grew at an average annual rate of 3.2 percent per capita. (By contrast, in the 10 years of NAVFA, even with the East Asian crisis, Korean growth averaged 4.3 percent and China's 3 percent in per capita terms. ) And while the hope was that NAFTA would reduce income disparities between the United States and its southern neighbor, in fact they have grown by 10.2 percent in the last decade. Meanwhile, there has been disappointing progress in reducing poverty in Mexico, where real wages have been falling at the rate of 0.2 percent a year. These outcomes should not have come as a surprise. NAFTA does give Mexico a slight advantage over other trading partners. But with its low tax base, low investment in education and technology, and high inequality, Mexico would have a hard time competing with a dynamic China. NAFTA enhanced Mexico's ability to supply American manufacturing firms with low-cost parts, but it did not make Mexico into an independently productive economy. According to the passage, which of the following is true?