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In reply to the discussion: Bill Clinton and Republicans promised NAFTA would create jobs.. [View all]pampango
(24,692 posts)That hardly makes him a genius or even 'right'. It certainly does make him a republican. (They do that all the time now. Fear-mongering has become a republican specialty.)
Manufacturing jobs had been declining in the US (and in every other developed country) since the mid-1950's. Predicting that an existing 40-year trend would continue does not make one a genius. Blaming that trend and its continuation on a policy that happened 40 years later is more fear-mongering than science.
Ross also predicted that American wages would decline after NAFTA. (Again he saw a 20-year trend of declining wages and probably thought "I'll look like a genius if I predict that wages will decline after NAFTA".) Unfortunately for him, not for American workers, he was wrong.
(See the graphs in post 7 above.)