Bill Clinton and Republicans promised NAFTA would create jobs..

[pampango]

13. The real power of NAFTA: it lowered wages for 20 years before it was enacted. And manufacturing jobs

declined for 40 years before it took effect. Now that is real power.

And "most favored nation" status was necessary for China to join the WTO. Do you think China would have disappeared off the economic map if it had not been able to join the WTO? On what do you base that belief? Another major economy - Russia - did just fine raising its exports to the US without being in the WTO. Would China have been different?

I think a better bet would have been to somehow promote a Mao II to lead China after Mao's death. That way China's government could have stayed focused on internal repression of 1.3 billion poor people instead of getting them involved in the world economy. (Just kidding. Promoting repression is not the answer to our problems.)

If the "Mao II" strategy did not work and keeping them out of the WTO did not work to stop them, what would you have proposed? A Cuba-style trade embargo? I suppose that has worked to keep Cubans poor and isolated from the world economy (we haven't lost many jobs to Cuba outsourcing), but I think most of us here do not support it.