Despite The Catastrophic Impact Of NAFTA, There Are Still A Few Democrats Joining The GOP To Back Treaties Like It

When Obama was using populism as a tool to beat corporate Democrat Hilary Clinton, he found NAFTA a useful weapon to use against her and to rally the Democratic base to his side. He claimed he would renegotiate NAFTA if he were elected. "Our trade agreements," he thundered, "should not just be good for Wall Street it should also be good for Main Street. And the problem that we've had is that we've had is that we've had corporate lobbyists often times in negotiating these trade agreements; but the AFL-CIO hasn't been involved. Ordinary working people have not been involved." In another debate he said. "NAFTA was a mistake. Hillary, on occasion has said-- just last year-- that this has been a boon to the economy. I think it has been devastating because our trade agreements did not have labor standards and environmental standards that were assuring workers in the U.S. were getting a square deal."

Well, he was elected and we're about to "celebrate" two decades of NAFTA and none of the promises to give workers "a square deal" have been delivered. Today Hillary is the likely Democratic Party nominee for 2016 but she is also the likely Wall Street nominee. They have their candidate. It wouldn't surprise me to see the Republicans run a longshot candidate-- either Cruz or Paul-- who tries to embrace the traditional Democratic mantle of Main Street and run against Wall Street and against Hillary as a Wall Street shill.

Michael Snyder's blog, The Economic Collapse does not offer an especially progressive critique but his look at 20 years of NAFTA (and CAFTA) would make sense to any progressive. Notice in the Charlie LeDuff video he uses that the congresswoman calling on Obama to renegotiate the NAFTA and CAFTA agreements is a mainstream conservative Republican, Candice Miller from Michigan.



Snyder may think that all this could have been avoided if only the American people had elected Ross Perot instead of Bill Clinton but his list of 20 facts that show how NAFTA is still destroying the American economy is worth contemplating as we head into another presidential campaign and as we barrel towards the NAFTA-like Trans Pacific Partnership.

Back in the early 1990s, the North American Free Trade Agreement was one of the hottest political issues in the country. When he was running for president in 1992, Bill Clinton promised that NAFTA would result in an increase in the number of high quality jobs for Americans that it would reduce illegal immigration. Ross Perot warned that just the opposite would happen.  He warned that if NAFTA was implemented there would be a "giant sucking sound" as thousands of businesses and millions of jobs left this country. Most Americans chose to believe Bill Clinton. Well, it is 20 years later and it turns out that Perot was right and Clinton was dead wrong. But now history is repeating itself, and most Americans don't even realize that it is happening. As you will read about at the end of this article, Barack Obama has been negotiating a secret trade treaty that is being called "NAFTA on steroids", and if Congress adopts it we could lose millions more good paying jobs.

…Many Americans like to remember Bill Clinton as a "great president" for some reason. Well, it turns out that he was completely and totally wrong about NAFTA. The following are 20 facts that show how NAFTA is destroying the economy...

#1 More than 845,000 American workers have been officially certified for Trade Adjustment Assistance because they lost their jobs due to imports from Mexico or Canada or because their factories were relocated to those nations.

#2 Overall, it is estimated that NAFTA has cost us well over a million jobs.

#3 U.S. manufacturers pay Mexican workers just a little over a dollar an hour to do jobs that American workers used to do.

#4 The number of illegal immigrants living in the United States has more than doubled since the implementation of NAFTA.

#5 In the year before NAFTA, the U.S. had a trade surplus with Mexico and the trade deficit with Canada was only 29.6 billion dollars. Last year, the U.S. had a combined trade deficit with Mexico and Canada of 177 billion dollars.

#6 It has been estimated that the U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every 1 billion dollars of goods that are imported from overseas.

#7 One professor has estimated that cutting the total U.S. trade deficit in half would create 5 million more jobs in the United States.

#8 Since the auto industry bailout, approximately 70 percent of all GM vehicles have been built outside the United States. In fact, many of them are now being built in Mexico.

#9 NAFTA hasn't worked out very well for Mexico either. Since 1994, the average yearly rate of economic growth in Mexico has been less than one percent.

#10 The exporting of massive amounts of government-subsidized U.S. corn down into Mexico has destroyed more than a million Mexican jobs and has helped fuel the continual rise in the number of illegal immigrants coming north.

#11 Someone making minimum wage in Mexico today can buy 38 percent fewer consumer goods than the day before NAFTA went into effect.

#12 Overall, the United States has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

#13 Back in the 1980s, more than 20 percent of the jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only about 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.

#14 We have fewer Americans working in manufacturing today than we did in 1950 even though our population has more than doubled since then.

#15 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, only 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#16 As I wrote about recently, one out of every six men in their prime working years (25 to 54) do not have a job at this point.

#17 Because we have shipped millions of jobs overseas, the competition for the jobs that remain has become extremely intense and this has put downward pressure on wages. Right now, half the country makes $27,520 a year or less from their jobs.

#18 When adults cannot get decent jobs, it is often children that suffer the most. It is hard to believe, but more than one out of every five children in the United States is living in poverty in 2014.

#19 In 1994, only 27 million Americans were on food stamps. Today, more than 46 million Americans are on food stamps.

#20 According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.

Happy anniversary. The only senators up for reelection in November who voted for NAFTA are Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Thad Cochran (R-MS). And in the House, there are only 21 NAFTA supporters seeking reelection in November:

• Joe Barton (R-TX)
• Xavier Becerra (D-CA)
• Ken Calvert (R-CA)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)
• Jimmy Duncan (R-TN)
• Anna Eshoo (D-CA)
• Sam Farr (D-CA)
• Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)
• Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)
• Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX)
• Sam Johnson (R-TX)
• Peter King (R-NY)
• Jim McDermott (D-WA)
• Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
• David Price (D-NC)
• Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)
• Lucille Royball-Allard (D-CA)
• Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI)
• Lamar Smith (R-TX)
• Fred Upton (R-MI)

Democrats have generally learned from the disaster of NAFTA and most House Democrats now vote against these unfair trade bills. Republicans tend to support them-- and overwhelmingly so. Three came up on October 12, 2011, one for Columbia, one for Panama and one for Korea. The Colombia agreement was the most controversial and it passed 262-167, 231-9 among Republicans but only 31 Democrats voting YES and 158 opposing. The Panama deal passed 300-129, 234 Republicans voting AYE and just 6 opposed, while 66 Democrats joined the Republicans and 123 opposed. The Korea bill passed 278-151, 219 Republicans for it and 21 Republicans against it and 59 Democrats voting AYE and 130 voting NAY.

Generally speaking, the worst corporate shills from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party are the ones still joint the Republicans to back these disastrous trade agreements. There were only 17 Democrats seeking reelection in November who voted for all three of the terrible 2011 trade deals:

• Kathy Castor (FL)
• Gerry Connolly (New Dem-VA)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog/New Dem-TN)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Joe Crowley (New Dem-NY)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Susan Davis (New Dem-CA)
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)
• Steny Hoyer (MD)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Rick Larsen (New Dem-WA)
• Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY)
• Jared Polis (New Dem-CO)
• David Price (NC)
• Adam Smith (New Dem-WA)
• Chris Van Hollen (MD)
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz (New Dem-FL)

UPDATE: Peter King (R-Long Island)

In 2011 Peter King's district moved significantly east into Suffolk County, where bad trade policies have had a bad impact on many working families. And few Members of Congress have been as strong in bolstering these bad trade policies as King. This cycle-- although she is being undercut by King ally Steve Israel-- the Democrat running against King, Pat Maher, is talking with voters about King's role in the disastrous trade agenda that has caused so much economic displacement in Suffolk County.

King likes to portray himself as a friend of labor and the American worker, yet he holds a 39% anti-union voting record from the AFL-CIO and has always voted for free trade agreements.

In his first year in Congress back in 1993, King voted for NAFTA. Since then, he’s voted for permanently normalizing trade relations with China, CAFTA, and other free trade agreements with Singapore, Peru, Chile, Columbia, and South Korea.

The move towards free trade over the last thirty years has created large trade deficits for the United States, with imports greatly exceeding exports. Various studies have found that NAFTA, formally enacted in 1994, has resulted in the loss of between 700,000-1 million jobs, including over 3,000 on Long Island.

Permanent Normalized Trade Relations (PNTR) with China, which passed in 2000, has caused almost 3 million jobs to be lost nationally. And 60,000 American jobs have been lost since the implementation of the most recent free trade agreement with South Korea, in 2011.