Bill Clinton and Republicans promised NAFTA would create jobs..

[Recursion]

21. It's a simple question, "did employment and wages go up or down after NAFTA"?

That's exactly the kind of question statistics can answer (though this isn't even statistics, just literally counting things).

In both cases the answer is clear:

Median wages went up
Employment went up
Manufacturing went up
Manufacturing wages went up

More people had jobs after NAFTA than before, and they were making more money. (Am I the only person who remembers the late 90s here?)

The only thing that went down was "manufacturing jobs as a proportion of the total economy", which is fine. Agriculture jobs are way down too. That's a good thing. People found other jobs, making more money. That's great. Hell, remember '98, '99? Buger King was hiring at $12/hour because that's what it took to fill positions.

If it were true that so much stuff is manufactured in the US, surely I would find the words, "Made in the USA" on more that I buy than I do.

1. Not everything made in the US gets marked as that

2. Most of what we manufacture we export (in particular, we manufacture most of the machines other countries use to manufacture the plastic crap we buy)

3. There's no "if" involved; it's just a simple fact

How much of the manufacturing consists of simply assembling parts made in other countries?

Some, though only the "value add" from that assembly is included in that chart.

What's much more common, as I alluded to above, is that we make the machines and plant that get used in other countries to manufacture our iPods, etc.