In Case You Missed This... 'NAFTA, TPP & The Clinton Global Initiative's "Free Trade" Activism' [View all]

[WillyT]

NAFTA, TPP & The Clinton Global Initiative's "Free Trade" Activism
By Gaius Publius - Crooks & Liars
1/21/15 11:36am



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Let's start with NAFTA, which everyone now knows was a jobs and trade-deficit disaster, and a billionaire pot of gold. It's likely though that you may not know the details, including the details of how it was sold. So a quick look back.

This is from a recent Huffington Post piece by Michele Swenson. She opens by looking at the 1990s and tying together President Bill Clinton, NAFTA-loving billionaire Pete Peterson (the one who hates Social Security), and the "prediction" — before it was passed — that NAFTA would create a million American jobs.

Pay attention also to the predicted shrinking trade deficit. That piece — the trade-deficit piece — is often lost. From the article (my emphasis throughout):

NAFTA promoters in the '90s promised increased U.S. exports and jobs, with shrinking trade deficits. Senior Fellows of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), projected a NAFTA-induced trade surplus with Mexico, in turn, creating 170,000 new U.S. jobs by 1995. Within two years of NAFTA's passage, PIIE prognosticators readjusted their projection of new NAFTA-created jobs downward to "zero." The same group, created by billionaire corporate cheerleader Pete Peterson, is again forecasting increased exports and jobs if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is passed.

Referencing 19 serious pre-NAFTA economic studies projecting zero net job loss if NAFTA were to pass, President Bill Clinton estimated the creation of 200,000 U.S. jobs within two years, and 1 million within five years, based on a projected export boom to Mexico. Twenty years after Clinton signed NAFTA into law, Global Trade Watch reports a 450 percent increase in the U.S. trade deficit, resulting in the export of almost one million jobs, and downward pressure on wages.

In fact, the average annual U.S. agricultural trade deficit with Mexico and Canada ballooned to almost three times the pre-NAFTA level, to $975 million within two decades of NAFTA's passage, eliminating an estimated one million net U.S. jobs by 2004, reports the Economic Policy Institute. As U.S. food processors moved to Mexico to take advantage of low wages, U.S. food imports soared. Public Citizen has tallied in a comprehensive report the promises by U.S. corporations to create specific numbers of jobs if NAFTA passed, and the consequent record of many of the same firms who relocated jobs to Mexico and Canada.

So let's fix three pieces in our brains:

▪ Before NAFTA passed, Bill Clinton, Pete Peterson and a raft of "pre-NAFTA economic studies" predicted one million new jobs, increased exports, and a lower trade deficit.

▪ After NAFTA passed, we lost one million jobs, increased imports, and increased the trade deficit by a factor of almost 5.

▪ Pro-NAFTA companies, who promised to create new jobs here, moved existing jobs abroad almost as soon as it was signed.

The third piece counts. Clinton claims to have been mistaken on free-trade policy...

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Much More: http://crooksandliars.com/2015/01/nafta-tpp-clinton-global-initiatives-free