Decades on, NAFTA still political flash point (Thousands of Ohio jobs sent to Mexico)

It has been more than 20 years since the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, but you wouldn’t know it by listening to the leading presidential candidates from both major parties.

International trade has emerged as a flash point this election cycle, and NAFTA is the powder keg. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ full-on attack of the deal helped propel him to a major upset victory of Hillary Clinton in the Michigan Democratic primary this month.

Even GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has gotten in on the action, calling the trade deal between the United States, Mexico, and Canada a disaster and pledging to renegotiate it or simply ignore it.

Unquestionably, the United States has lost millions of manufacturing jobs over the last two decades. The losses have been particularly brutal in industrial states such as Ohio and Michigan.

tate data show Ohio has lost one third of its manufacturing jobs since 2000, and Michigan has lost 31 percent. At least 4,350 jobs in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan were shipped to Mexico since 2001, records show, including more than 1,000 jobs from an LG Philips Displays television tube plant in Putnam County that moved nearly all of its work to Mexico more than a decade ago.

Can we have it both ways?

No jobs in Mexico means massive immigration to the US.
Jobs in Mexico means much less immigration.

After NAFTA passed, Clnton Treas Sec Rubin destroyed the Mexican economy, sending maquiladoras to Asia and unemployed to the US. That had much more effect on us than NAFTA.

Of course, NAFTA is Orwellian speak for Negotiated and Favortism Trade Agreement. There is no FREE trade in NAFTA except in the name.

Unquestionably, the United States has lost millions of manufacturing jobs over the last two decades.

The common theme is that NAFTA is the cause of the lost jobs.

I have always felt that over-regulation, over-taxation, and a general hostile business environment have been the cause of business and their jobs leaving this country.

NAFTA was just the vehicle created to allow them to escape before the coercive government put them out of business.

The common theme is that NAFTA is the cause of the lost jobs.

I have always felt that over-regulation, over-taxation, and a general hostile business environment have been the cause of business and their jobs leaving this country.

NAFTA was just the vehicle created to allow them to escape before the coercive government put them out of business.
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Bingo!

You have identified the problem. Make America the best place to make things don’t punish consumers with taxes/tariffs.

Jobs in Mexico means much less immigration.

When NAFTA was being pushed, the promoters pushed that line of B/S, saying that "If WE send our factories down there, THEY won't be coming up here." I always marveled that no one called them racists then.

My sister used to vacation in Baja a lot and I asked her what the Mexicans down there thought of it. The general theme is "Why would we work in those factories down here for less when we can go North and get more pay?".

When Perot was running for President, he held up a photo of a Ford plant already in Mexico and asked "What's wrong with this picture?" I couldn't see anything until he pointed out the obvious - there was no parking lot because, unlike Americans, they couldn't afford the product they made. They lived in ramshackle barrios and were bused in.

I talked with a small manufacturer who had a wall full of patent awards (he devised a machine to segment those canned Mandarin orange slices.).

He had invented a machine that plucked the stems from strawberries without bruising the fruit. He tried selling it to U.S. companies in Mexico and never made a sale. When he asked one manager why not, the guy candidly showed him by taking him on a tour of the operation.

In a room as big as a gymnasium, there were dozens of tables with 15-20 people of all ages bordering them, manually plucking out the stems (he said their fingers were like a blur). On a catwalk above was a guy with a bullhorn haranguing the people to work faster.

The manager said that just washing down those machines would cost him more than what he was paying those people. The deal was that, in order to get that crappy job, the parents had to bring in their aunts, uncles and kids to work for free, so that out of 20 people working, maybe 10-12 were actually paid.

On another thread I wrote about Green Giant laying off their Mexican workers after 11 montsh, rehiring them a month later so they could call them "Seasonal Labor" and not even have to pay the pitiful Mexican minimum wage.

Multiply those tricks by thousands and then tell me how American labor can compete against that.

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