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NAFTA May Have Saved Many Autoworkers’ Jobs
New York Times ^ | March 29, 2016 | Eduardo Porter

Posted on 03/29/2016 4:16:27 PM PDT by Olog-hai

When Donald Trump threatened to “break” the North American Free Trade Agreement, auto industry workers offered up some of the loudest cheers.

Mr. Trump easily won the Republican primary in Michigan this month. The state, home base for the American auto industry, also delivered an upset victory to Bernie Sanders, the Democratic anti-NAFTA standard-bearer.

But the autoworkers’ animosity is aiming at the wrong target. There are still more than 800,000 jobs in the American auto sector. And there is a good case to be made that without NAFTA, there might not be much left of Detroit at all.

“Without the ability to move lower wage jobs to Mexico, we would have lost the whole industry,” said Gordon Hanson of the University of California, San Diego, who has been studying the impact of NAFTA on industries and workers since its inception more than two decades ago. …

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government; Mexico; Politics/Elections; US: Michigan
KEYWORDS: autoworkers; bailouts; detroit; governmentmotors; liberalagenda; marxism; nafta; outsourcing; sanders; trade; trump; trumpisnotreagan; trumpows; trumpronpaul; uaw
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To: Fai Mao
My issue with Mr. Trump’s position is that an import tariff is useless without curbing the excesses of unions.

The whole point of an import tariff is to protect the excesses of unions.


21 posted on 03/29/2016 5:22:26 PM PDT by Hoodat (Article 4, Section 4)
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To: dragnet2

Amen.

They lie


22 posted on 03/29/2016 5:24:46 PM PDT by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain and Proud of It! Prayer for Victory is the ONLY way to support the troops!)
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To: Olog-hai
There are still more than 800,000 jobs in the American auto sector.
Yeah?

Where?

23 posted on 03/29/2016 5:28:17 PM PDT by Bratch
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To: Olog-hai

Tell that to Ford workers whose jobs are moving to Mexico.


24 posted on 03/29/2016 5:39:58 PM PDT by entropy12 (When you vote, you are actually voting for the candidate's rich donors!)
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To: Hoodat

NAFTA resulted in the government picking winners and losers. Even worse, it also allowed foreign governments to do so.


25 posted on 03/29/2016 5:40:10 PM PDT by Olog-hai
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To: SuperLuminal

The title itself was outrageous enough.


26 posted on 03/29/2016 5:40:36 PM PDT by Olog-hai
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Comment #27 Removed by Moderator

To: Olog-hai

He is a damned LIAR. PERIOD!


28 posted on 03/29/2016 5:50:51 PM PDT by gartrell bibberts ( White privilege...the harder I work, the more privileged I become.)
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To: Hoodat; Fai Mao

But the dirty little secret is there are MORE unionized GOVERNMENT employees now than exist in ALL of private sector America.

And you and me pay not only these unionized government employee salaries, but their benefits, retirements on and on.

Government unionized employees are choking all of us off.


29 posted on 03/29/2016 5:53:48 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: Olog-hai

How so?


30 posted on 03/29/2016 6:07:38 PM PDT by Hoodat (Article 4, Section 4)
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To: arl295

Sounds like something lying lawyers like Gore or Cruz would say.


31 posted on 03/29/2016 6:10:07 PM PDT by SENTINEL (Kneel down to God. Stand up to tyrants. STICK TO YOUR GUNS !)
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To: entropy12

Maybe the Latino immigrants will follow the jobs back./s

“Nafta is often blamed for dynamics that are not of its making. The surge of Mexican exports in the 1990s was propelled by a sharp devaluation of the peso, which set off the so-called Tequila Crisis. The wave of immigration from Mexico into the United States, which lasted until 2005, was driven by a decline in government subsidies to farmers and an economic collapse that occurred just as millions of young Mexicans were entering their late teens and were desperate for jobs.”

Lasted until 2005?


32 posted on 03/29/2016 6:10:59 PM PDT by huldah1776 ( Vote Pro-life! Allow God to bless America before He avenges the death of the innocent.)
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To: dragnet2

Has DT talked about going back to non-union government employees?


33 posted on 03/29/2016 6:13:31 PM PDT by huldah1776 ( Vote Pro-life! Allow God to bless America before He avenges the death of the innocent.)
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To: Hoodat

How not so? NAFTA allowed non-market economies to trade with market economies, and paved the way for the deluge of regulations that followed. A free market does not permit beggar-thy-neighbor policies, nor does it make boats sink rather than float with a rising tide. Like I said, it is a false dilemma to posit a Scylla/Charybdis choice between free trade and mercantilism.

Marx would have not have endorsed free trade so enthusiastically if he had not seen how ready of a vehicle for an attack on society it was.


34 posted on 03/29/2016 6:15:56 PM PDT by Olog-hai
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To: entropy12

Maybe the Latino immigrants will follow the jobs back./s

“Nafta is often blamed for dynamics that are not of its making. The surge of Mexican exports in the 1990s was propelled by a sharp devaluation of the peso, which set off the so-called Tequila Crisis. The wave of immigration from Mexico into the United States, which lasted until 2005, was driven by a decline in government subsidies to farmers and an economic collapse that occurred just as millions of young Mexicans were entering their late teens and were desperate for jobs.”

Lasted until 2005?


35 posted on 03/29/2016 6:25:05 PM PDT by huldah1776 ( Vote Pro-life! Allow God to bless America before He avenges the death of the innocent.)
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To: Olog-hai

NAFTA resulted in the government picking winners and losers. Even worse, it also allowed foreign governments to do so.


I think you are right. I also think there are useful idiots in government who believe they are doing the right thing for the right reasons, but I also believe there are many powerful people in our government who have discovered (and benefit from) how much money they can make picking winners.

We are not a free market and what we have had for some time is not really capitalism. It’s crony capitalism with strong hints of socialism.


36 posted on 03/29/2016 6:33:21 PM PDT by volunbeer (ABH for President! - Anybody but Hillary)
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To: Olog-hai

Yeah....NOT moving jobs to Mexico would have cost American jobs.....OK. Obvious they couldn’t give a crap about the “low paying” (aka hourly workers that actually build the product thus creating wealth) jobs and the people who did them that are now mostly on welfare.


37 posted on 03/29/2016 7:07:13 PM PDT by Some Fat Guy in L.A. (Still bitterly clinging to rational thought despite it's unfashionability)
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To: huldah1776

That probably comes under the heading of, “We’re losing in every direction”, “Government fraud and waste are choking us off”. He targeted the entire system, which is obviously in need of a thorough cleaning and downsizing.


38 posted on 03/29/2016 7:30:30 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: Olog-hai
NAFTA allowed non-market economies to trade with market economies, and paved the way for the deluge of regulations that followed.

So it wasn't NAFTA itself, but the anti-NAFTA backlash.

39 posted on 03/29/2016 7:40:18 PM PDT by Hoodat (Article 4, Section 4)
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To: Hoodat

No, not the “anti-NAFTA backlash” that never happened.


40 posted on 03/29/2016 7:54:29 PM PDT by Olog-hai
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