Posted on 12/08/2013 1:14:48 PM PST by Theoria
Twenty years ago, millions of Americans were cocking their ears — waiting to hear a "giant sucking sound."
They feared Mexico would begin vacuuming up U.S. manufacturing jobs as soon as President Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, on Dec. 8, 1993.
The "sucking sound" famously had been forecast in 1992 by Ross Perot, the businessman turned independent presidential candidate.
Clinton won the election, and began pushing for NAFTA's passage. He promised the sprawling trade agreement would become a wealth generator as it pulled together the economies of Canada, the United States and Mexico.
Who turned out to be right, Perot or Clinton?
Over the years, polls have suggested most Americans don't much like NAFTA, and unions remain sharply critical. But economists generally say Clinton's prediction came closer to hitting the mark than Perot's.
"I'd say NAFTA was an overwhelming success," said Sara Johnson, an economist with IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm. "There are strong, two-way trade flows now."
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
The North American Free Trade Agreement: Ronald Reagan's Vision Realized
'...The NAFTA also will offer Americans cheaper goods, and increase U.S. exports by making them more affordable for the rest of the world. Moreover, it will create an estimated 200,000 new jobs for Americans, reduce illegal immigration from Mexico, help tackle drug trafficking, strengthen Mexican democracy and human rights, and serve as a model for the rest of the world.'
The Powers That Be (TPTB) love this law.
Anyone with a clue about economics supports this Treaty.
Not signing it would not have saved jobs that were not productive in the American economy.
I’m glad if you’re pointing out that it didn’t matter whether it was George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton who won - NAFTA would have been realized with either.
Sure they do. Just look how great our economy is doing.
I have never completely understood this, from an “eyes on the ground” perspective.
I go to Mexico A LOT (I am stranded there right now).
Electronics of any kind cost 1.5-3 times as much as in the US. When I visit the in-laws I usually have a number of electronic items (PCs, memory sticks, etc.).
I thought NAFTA was supposed to normalize prices...?
Twenty years ago, millions of Americans... feared Mexico would begin vacuuming up U.S. manufacturing jobs... The "sucking sound" famously had been forecast in 1992 by Ross Perot [who sucked and still sucks]... [Thanks to the idiots who voted for Perot] Clinton won the election... promised the sprawling trade agreement would become a wealth generator as it pulled together the economies of Canada, the United States and Mexico... economists generally say Clinton's prediction came closer to hitting the mark than Perot's.
25% of our people are unemployed sitting idle
another 25% of our people are working part-time, or full time jobs that pay far less than what they used to make
Anyone with a clue about economics, can’t explain away what NAFTA and trade with China have garnered this nation.
What they can do is come on this forum and make complete asses out of themselves.
Within one year after NAFTA passed the company where I was employed moved several component assembly operations to Mexico and laid off hundreds of people in the USA.
The assemblies manufactured at the Mexico operations were garbage compared to the quality of the Asemblies made in the USA. It took a lot of work in the field to find and correct the problems from shoddy manufacturing.
The company knew this but the competition was manufacturing their products in Mexico and it was a choice between cutting costs with cheap Mexican assemblies or going out of business.
How could it decrease illegal immigration from Mexico?
“Against this backdrop of changing agricultural policies, what happened to corn afterr NAFTA? The original debate about NAFTA produced a wide range of predictions, but both advocates and critics agreed on two main points.
First, they predicted that the corn opening would en-courage a sharp drop in agricultural employment – since most agricultural jobs were in corn.
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Second, analysts predicted that Mexico’s production of corn would also fall in the face of cheaper imports, and as a result corn imports would increase.
The data that follows shows that some of these expectations were fulfilled, while others were not. Farm employment did drop, as expected – continuing a long term trend.
Two million workers left agriculture between the 1991 and 2007 agricultural censuses – 19% of the farm laborforce, including unpaid family labor (Scott, Table 10A, this volume).
Plus, the agricultural share of Mexico’s total employment contracted even more sharply, dropping from 23% in 1990to 12% in 2008.
Yet corn production went up, even though Mexico’s producer price dropped,driven down by falling import prices.The widely-held view is that while Mexican trade negotiators managed to successfully resist US pressures to include oil in NAFTA, insurmountable US pressures obliged corn to be in-cluded in the free trade agreement.
This was not the case. It turns out that Mexican tradenegotiators acceded to including corn in exchange for the US opening its market to future or-ange juice imports (Maxfeld and Shapiro 1998).”
h ttp://www.academia.edu/3609988/Subsidizing_Inequality_Mexican_Corn_Policy_Since_NAFTA
Government subsidies put a finger on the scale of this Free Trade dream, doesn’t it? We will suffer it more and more from China. When we lose those areas of production, they will not come back fast—if ever. Shouldn’t government subsidies be stopped, especially on exports and accept no imports that are government subsidized? Wouldn’t that be a more natural *free market?
Tell that to the small black Georgia community who had to, en masse, go on welfare when the only game in town - a broom factory - took off for Mexico.
Tell that to the apparel plant workers in Alabama who asked for medical coverage and were told to shut up or the plant would move to Mexico. They became quiet and the plant moved down there anyway.
Tell that to the Vanity Fair employees in Monroeville, AL who lost their jobs - and homes - when the plant headed South.
Tell that to the $18-an-hour millwrights in Warner Robbins, GA when the canning plant went South and the allied beer-maker closed and headed back North. Those guys ended up mowing lawns, trying to stay afloat, only to go under when their property taxes were raised to make up for the missing plants.
I worked in Georgia and personally saw all these things happen.
When Perot was running, he showed a photo of a Ford auto plant in Mexico and asked "What's wrong with this picture?" I didn't spot anything until he pointed out that there were no parking lots - workers were bused in from the barrios as, unlike their American brethren, they didn't make enough to buy the product they made.
NAFTA and the "Free Trade" approach were only scams to eliminate American tariffs so factories could go overseas and still sell their products here. I had no problem if they went overseas to sell to the locals there, but all they did was take advantage of the poverty-level wages and still charge American middle class prices.
There was a two-volume set of books that detailed the entire NAFTA treaty at a Macon college. I spent days plowing through them. Book One and part of Book Two all sounded straightforward - until you got to the "except fors" at the end. The one I remember the most was that Mexico could ship us any engine made there, but we couldn't send anything larger than lawnmower engines. There were whole sections where it said we would unilaterally drop our tariffs, but Mexico had 10-15 years before thay had to drop theirs. They could send Haz-Mat trucks with their drivers up here but they didn't have to meet our standards for 10 years, etc. etc.
Not many people like to admit that NAFTA ruined the American Manufacturing Economy. I worked for a company that supplied support product to many, many manufacturing facilities. Many, many, many were shut down and moved away. The ‘good’ paying jobs with ‘good’ benefits went away and never came back. Clinton’s signing of this “law” was the “trip-wire” that has now led us to our current state of affairs . . . no jobs; no good jobs; part time work; socialist and global money-mongers began with Nafta to take over the world. They continue to make their marks upon the entire world while diminishing the overwhelming previously-positive-American-economy. Wanna blame Obama for everything? - - He deserves his own “blames”, but our anemic economy IS the result of Both NAFTA “and” overpriced gasoline that sucks out the spending money of both good and hard working Americans. Wanna blame a real culprit? Blame Clinton!
How would not having Free Trade kept those jobs?
It wasn’t Free Trade that killed the jobs, it was all the regulations that most companies have to spend mucho grande dollars to comply with that killed those jobs.
Economically ignorant buffons can come to this forum and make conservatives look like asses.
Trade increases efficiencies for both economies.
Unemployment and underemployment is the result of a lack of economic liberty not an excess.
California in a slump and Texas doing relatively well.
Last I read this was a conservative forum not a National Socialist forum.
It is doing poorly because we elected leftist like BHO.
Not because we ratified NAFTA.
A lack of employment and underemployment is the result of too little liberty not an excess.
The countries with the greatest economic freedom are the richest and the countries with the least economic freedom are the poorest.
You know what, your version of “FREE TRADE” was fully implemented.
You tell me Mr. Wizard. How’s our economy doing?
Do you realize we had a net loss of jobs under Bush his first four years? That’s prior to the meld down in 2008. It precedes it by four plus years.
The results are in. This did not benefit our nation.
You can call me a national socialist all you like. The proof is in the pudding bud. FAIL!
You guys had your way over plenty of objections. Look at the disaster. No. Never-mind. You obviously can’t fathom that anything at all went wrong.
As such, you have no voice on this topic other than to screw yourself further into the dirt.
NAFTA is nothing more then crony ‘capitalism’ and wealth redistribution.
The only liberty involved is for global corporations to move their money and jobs out of the US.
Hmm really. So Obama was election in 2000. That’s good to know. Hint, things were going terribly wrong in Bush’s first four year. It continued into his second term, and then the table was set for Obama.
Sure Obama has f’d things up worse. He was handed a doozie of a situation in 2009. We set the tone for massive bailouts before he even hit the White House door.
We couldn’t have done this better if it were planned. And quite frankly, many of us think it was.
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