Arkady
President
When NAFTA was being debated, I supported it. At the time, that was one of my "Republican" positions. NAFTA had been envisioned by Reagan, negotiated and signed by Bush, pushed relentlessly by right-wing think-tanks, and opposed by labor unions. The Heritage Foundation headlined it as "Ronald Reagan's Vision Realized." When it was finally ratified, Democrats were nearly evenly split, but Republicans backed it by a margin of nearly 3-to-1. That made it a tough position for a card-carrying liberal like me to take, but I'd looked into the facts and had to admit the supporters had made the stronger case, and so I needed to go where the facts took me, even if it put me in ugly company.
In the years since then, the politics have changed. Although NAFTA is still disliked by the same kinds of liberal/protectionist groups that originally opposed it, the Republicans have really shifted. Their current standard-bearer calls it the worst trade deal in history. I still think it was a good thing.
The case against NAFTA is that it supposedly gutted manufacturing in this country. So, let's go to the numbers. NAFTA went into effect on January 1, 1994. Here's what the count of manufacturing jobs looks like in the five years leading up to that date and the five years following it:
As you can see, manufacturing jobs were declining in the years leading up to NAFTA. We lost 6.9% of all manufacturing jobs in this country between the start of 1989 and the end of 1993. Then we gained 3.6% in the next five years.
Note, I've specifically looked at manufacturing jobs here, rather than jobs generally, to head off the usual right-wing rejoinder for any mentioned of Clinton-era improvement (you know, the one that goes a bit like "dotcom bubble.... waaaah!") These weren't service-industry or software or Internet jobs. They were manufacturing jobs, and we went from drastic, years-long decline to decent years-long improvement, right around the time NAFTA became law.
The truth is, leading up to NAFTA, there'd been long-term decline for manufacturing jobs in this country. At the peak, in the late Carter years, there was one manufacturing job for every 11.5 Americans. On the eve of NAFTA, that was down to one manufacturing job for every 15.5 Americans. We had a short reprieve after NAFTA went into effect, until Bush became president, but then the bottom dropped out again. Here's what the Bush years look like:
Since shortly after the end of the Great Recession, we've been on the upswing again, though nowhere near the pace we'd need to get us back to the pre-Bush high any time soon.... much less the pre-Reagan high.
Here's what Obama's time looks like:
If NAFTA were what went wrong with manufacturing, what pattern would we expect to see? Well, we'd expect to see things going on well before NAFTA (rather than generally declining in the 80s and early 90s), then for things to head south for the first several years after NAFTA was in force. But that's not at all what the data looks like. It's almost the opposite of what the data looks like.
Mostly what happened to manufacturing was automation. Even the portion of the decline you could attribute to Chinese trade is largely irrelevant once you consider automation -- since generally the alternative to something being outsourced to a low-cost Chinese worker isn't having it done by a high-cost American, but rather having it done by a medium-cost robot. Blaming NAFTA has some emotional appeal for the same reason people have always been drawn to blaming foreigners for their nation's problems. But the data just doesn't support it.
In the years since then, the politics have changed. Although NAFTA is still disliked by the same kinds of liberal/protectionist groups that originally opposed it, the Republicans have really shifted. Their current standard-bearer calls it the worst trade deal in history. I still think it was a good thing.
The case against NAFTA is that it supposedly gutted manufacturing in this country. So, let's go to the numbers. NAFTA went into effect on January 1, 1994. Here's what the count of manufacturing jobs looks like in the five years leading up to that date and the five years following it:
As you can see, manufacturing jobs were declining in the years leading up to NAFTA. We lost 6.9% of all manufacturing jobs in this country between the start of 1989 and the end of 1993. Then we gained 3.6% in the next five years.
Note, I've specifically looked at manufacturing jobs here, rather than jobs generally, to head off the usual right-wing rejoinder for any mentioned of Clinton-era improvement (you know, the one that goes a bit like "dotcom bubble.... waaaah!") These weren't service-industry or software or Internet jobs. They were manufacturing jobs, and we went from drastic, years-long decline to decent years-long improvement, right around the time NAFTA became law.
The truth is, leading up to NAFTA, there'd been long-term decline for manufacturing jobs in this country. At the peak, in the late Carter years, there was one manufacturing job for every 11.5 Americans. On the eve of NAFTA, that was down to one manufacturing job for every 15.5 Americans. We had a short reprieve after NAFTA went into effect, until Bush became president, but then the bottom dropped out again. Here's what the Bush years look like:
Since shortly after the end of the Great Recession, we've been on the upswing again, though nowhere near the pace we'd need to get us back to the pre-Bush high any time soon.... much less the pre-Reagan high.
Here's what Obama's time looks like:
If NAFTA were what went wrong with manufacturing, what pattern would we expect to see? Well, we'd expect to see things going on well before NAFTA (rather than generally declining in the 80s and early 90s), then for things to head south for the first several years after NAFTA was in force. But that's not at all what the data looks like. It's almost the opposite of what the data looks like.
Mostly what happened to manufacturing was automation. Even the portion of the decline you could attribute to Chinese trade is largely irrelevant once you consider automation -- since generally the alternative to something being outsourced to a low-cost Chinese worker isn't having it done by a high-cost American, but rather having it done by a medium-cost robot. Blaming NAFTA has some emotional appeal for the same reason people have always been drawn to blaming foreigners for their nation's problems. But the data just doesn't support it.
