Bill Clinton and Republicans promised NAFTA would create jobs..

[Agnosticsherbet]

31. Every President will face a handful of fortuitous or disastrous events

Because the world is in a constant state of change. Massive changes in technology and communication made it easier to off shore jobs and save money for investors and owners at the expense of workers. China did not open the floodgates of cheap labor because of NAFTA. They did so because it made sense within the context of their own society and national agenda and the explosive growth of their own modern industrialization. For the same reason, a growling middle class created by that industrialization has increased the cost of their labor and many of these cheap labor jobs are migrating to other parts of Asia and Africa. Technology makes it cheaper to build a new factory in Sri Lanka or Uganda. This process was actually at work in the 60's with the development of Maquiladoras in Mexico that led to the shipment of jobs from the US. China actually poached a lot of those jobs with the promise of even cheaper labor.

I am not fond of Free Trade agreements, but they are not the only historical current that created todays situation. NAFTA is a symptom of the proliferation of International Corporations who chase poverty so they can use the desire of starving people for any kind of work. Once those workers get a glimmer of hope, the Corporation moves on to the next country because it is better for corporate profits to find the lowest wages possible for everyone but executives, the board of directors, investors, and owners.

The real answer is not bitching about NAFTA. The real answer is a world wide labor movement. Unions need to go international for real and fight for better wages in every country because a raise of $.05 an hour here is impetus for an industry to go where they can pay a worker $.01 for every dollar a worker makes here. As long as Corporations can move to take advantage of cheap labor for a fraction of the cost of transportation, this process will continue. Free Trade agreements are only a tiny fraction of that process, and they are not the cause of it.