steps by opening up investigations of their own.
Nearly forty thousand customers alleged that they
had fallen victim to the deceptive sales tactics of
some of MetLife’s agents. Those customers, includ-
ing many working-class families along with thou-
sands of senior citizens who did not receive MetLife
refunds, opted to pursue the matter in civil court.
From 1994 through 1999, thousands of customers
filed civil actions against MetLife. The company
agreed to pay $1.7 billion to settle customer lawsuits
regarding the deceptive sales practices.
Further Reading
Brewer, Geoffrey, and Nancy Arnott. “Can MetLife
Insure Honest Selling?”Sales and Marketing Man-
agement146, no. 3 (March, 1994): 8-9.
Hartley, Robert F.Business Ethics: Mistakes and Suc-
cesses. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2005.
Meier, Barry. “Metropolitan Life in Accord for Set-
tlement of Fraud Suits.”The New York Times,Au-
gust 19, 1999, p. A1.
Paul M. Klenowski
See also Advertising; Archer Daniels Midland scan-
dal; Business and the economy in the United States;
Crime; Health care; Health care reform; Scandals;
Stock market; Tobacco industry settlement; Wigand,
Jeffrey.
Mexico and the United States
Definition Diplomatic relations between the two
countries
During the 1990’s, political leadership in both the United
States and Mexico changed, with numerous significant
consequences.
At the beginning of 1993, Bill Clinton, a Democrat,
became the U.S. president. He replaced George
H. W. Bush, a Republican, and remained in office
until early 2001. In Mexico, the six-year presidency
of Carlos Salinas de Gortari ended in 1994. His suc-
cessor, Ernesto Zedillo (replacing a previously nomi-
nated candidate who was assassinated), remained in
office until 2000. Both Salinas and Zedillo were
members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI), which held a grip on power for most of the
century, although it climactically lost that hold by
the end of the decade.
NAFTA and Financial Crisis On January 1, 1994, a
most significant event in U.S.-Mexican economic re-
lations occurred. The North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, removing tar-
iffs on trade among Canada, the United States, and
Mexico. The treaty spewed a cornucopia of Ameri-
can goods at reduced prices into Mexico, benefiting
Mexican consumers. Mexican producers, however,
at a competitive disadvantage, suffered losses. More-
over, U.S. labor saw jobs lost as companies moved to
Mexico to lower their cost of wages. After 1995, U.S.
companies that built assembly plants in Mexico and
then shipped the lower-cost goods back to the
United States, called maquiladoras, appeared at a
rate of one a day. They accounted for one-fourth of
the Mexican gross domestic product (GDP) and
nearly one-fifth of its jobs. On the day that NAFTA
took effect, Maya Indian rebels in Chiapas, the
Zapatistas, staged an uprising.
In December, 1994, just after the inauguration of
President Zedillo, Mexico devalued its currency, the
peso. Financial panic ensued, and capital fled the
country. Fearing bankruptcy, Mexico appealed for
international aid. President Clinton engineered a
multinational response to the appeal, providing $20
billion from the United States toward a $50 billion
international bailout for the country. The financial
shock wave that rippled other countries was known
as the “tequila effect.”Immigration and Trafficking Issues of illegal im-
migration and drug smuggling into the United
States swelled during the 1990’s. The United
States experienced economic expansion and wide-
spread job growth. Mexico had a surplus of work-
ers. From 1950 to 2000, the Mexican population
soared from 25 to 100 million people, and average
life expectancy extended to more than seventy
years. Young job-seekers flocked to the United
States because even low American wages were
higher than average Mexican incomes. They con-
centrated in U.S. states along the Rio Grande bor-
der. The advancing influx pushed farther north,
however, settling in areas previously without His-
panic populations.
By decade’s end, one-third of the 30 million
foreign-born residents of the United States were
from Mexico, and 10 million of the foreign-born
were undocumented, with half from Mexico. Thus,
it was estimated that one of two Mexicans in the564 Mexico and the United States The Nineties in America