NAFTA at 20: One Million U.S. Jobs Lost, Higher Income Inequality

[jeff47]

12. You're making the mistake of thinking that NAFTA is about trade.

All of these "free trade" agreements are not about trade. We already had statistically insignificant tariffs around the world before all of the recent press for "free trade". Variations on exchange rates vastly dwarfed tariffs.

Instead, these trade agreements are about capital. Wanna move your slaughterhouse to Mexico so you can avoid USDA inspections? Before NAFTA, you could do that, but you'd have to label your meat as coming from Mexico. And consumers avoided it because of that label. Now, thanks to NAFTA, you can force the US to remove the "made in the USA" label from your competitor's meat.

Don't like environmental regulations? Move your company to Canada, and then sue California when that evil state dares to ban your highly profitable fuel additive.

And so on.

The jobs were lost not because of falling trade barriers. The jobs were lost because the treaties were rigged to create massive benefits for offshoring. Mexican and Canadian companies have benefits that US companies can not access.