I never said anything to indicate I might be implying we had a trade surplus or deficit with Mexico nor anything you took as saying such a thing. So where did you dig up the blatant lie comment?. What I did say is that it helped maintain exports of products from the three countries that would otherwise be produced in China or another low wage country. Additionally none of the stats you show can be definitively pinned on NAFTA, there are way to many factors out there. The simple part of the answer is that there are a whole lot of choices where companies can produce product for less money than they can in the U.S., and Mexico is not at the top of the list because there are a lot of places where product can be produced far less than in Mexico. Many companies with operations in Mexico have them there so that they can work closely with their operations in the U.S. and easily ship product back and forth (in other words because even though not the cheapest option Mexico is convenient). Without Mexico being a viable option the other choices involve places like China where you have product produced by a Chinese company and zero parts of production done in the U.S. Which is worse?
It would be nice if we could make everything here in the U.S. but in the real world there are not many people that are going to pay double or more the price for labor intensive products just because they are made in the USA.