In October, 1993 (before NAFTA became law on 1/1/1994), Martin Kasindorf of Newsday reported President Clinton insisted that
"I would never knowingly do anything to cost an American a job," defending his support for the North American Free Trade Agreement before a labor audience fearful that the controversial pact will funnel work to Mexico. "Is it a perfect agreement? No," the president told 1,000 delegates to the AFL-CIO's annual convention. "But I don't want to make the perfect, the enemy of the better"
Well, we know how that has turned out for the American worker, don’t we? Cheap-labor-seeking corporations and money-grubbing politicians got the goldmine. American workers got the shaft!
In his all-out push to hand corporations what they wanted, Clinton enlisted Attorney General Janet Reno who faithfully predicted that by raising Mexican living standards and wage levels,
"NAFTA is our best hope for reducing illegal migration in the long haul. If it fails, effective immigration control will become impossible."
Well, we know how that worked out too, don’t we? NAFTA did for workers in Mexico exactly what it did here...made things worse while shifting more wealth to the already wealthy.
Read on, please.
In the 1970’s I was a Manufacturing Industry "Consultant" for one of the largest and most highly regarded high technology companies in America. My specialty was Apparel Manufacturing. I had a degree in Electrical Engineering, several years of computer programming and systems work in the "rag business" under my belt and an employer-paid-for stint at the New York Fashion Institute of Technology. My job was to travel my territory (Dallas to Honolulu) meeting with Apparel Manufacturers to help them understand and implement computer technology to improve productivity from the cutting room to the front office.
The apparel industry was flourishing. Almost every major city, and many smaller ones, had one or more apparel manufacturing firms doing business and providing work to locals and others...their suppliers, the truck drivers that delivered raw materials and carried away their finished goods, the cleaning services that took care of their plants and offices, and so on. Many of these companies were locally owned. Larger companies employed thousands of workers...and many, thru both the employment they provided and their charitable works, had a huge positive impact on their communities. While some were "sweat shops" many paid attention to working conditions and played by the golden rule, offering clean and bright work spaces, cafeterias, and piped-in music; some offered child care and many offered health care benefits.
By and large these companies no longer exist. The jobs are gone. The buildings sit empty, the production lines are silent. Try to find clothing manufactured in America. And, for every production worker who lost his or her job in the factory, someone else was affected....the order entry clerk, the billing clerk, the people in the warehouse who picked the orders and packed and shipped them, the truckers, the maintenance people who kept machines running, the food service people, and on and on. The same is true for the textiles industry. Gone. The industry and the jobs. Gone! WHY?
In the 1980’s American businesses were feeling the competition from other parts of the world. Those of us around then remember the Japanese selling TV’s and other electronics at prices often below their cost (a marketing ploy that ultimately drove our electronics manufacturers out of business or off-shore for cheaper labor). The American consumer wasn’t unhappy with this development, and our elected representatives had neither the vision nor the spine to take steps to mitigate either the outflow of American dollars to foreign manufacturers and their governments or the corresponding loss of jobs here.
(Note that Japan, as of March of this year, was the largest foreign holder of American debt...$644 B with China in second place with $350 B).
Corporations, whose main motivation is profit, saw Mexico as a good "off-shore" opportunity because their currency had been seriously devalued due to a heavy oil-based debt (sound familiar?). So, against the wishes of Labor and many Democrats, The Clinton White House caved to big business and sold out the Middle Class and the poor. As the fight developed both David Bonior (Minority Whip) and Dick Gephardt (Minority Leader) refused to support NAFTA. So, Clinton had to turn to Republicans and wavering Democrats with arm twisting and promises of pork. Politics above principle and above the welfare of the American worker seems to have been the climate. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Long story short...with assurances that NAFTA would in fact increase jobs by 200K a year and fear-mongering to the Unions that if NAFTA didn’t pass we wouldn’t get some kind of Health Care program passed in Congress, Clinton steamrolled NAFTA into law. (You can read about the Pork later HERE. )
NAFTA was a kick in the face to organized labor and the beginning of the end for apparel and many other manufacturing and assembly jobs in America. Manufacturing was the one place where a bright energetic worker without a college education could find a secure, decent paying job...with the possibility of moving up in both pay and position. The apparel industry was particularly important to women...offering unskilled women the opportunity to work and add to the family income. Broadly speaking, these jobs went to $6 a day workers in Mexico and further South, and are now, through even more "free trade" legislation largely where workers earn $1/day. And, of course, we didn’t get Health Care legislation passed either.
Recent estimates I’ve read indicate America has lost well over four million manufacturing jobs since NAFTA and other "free trade" agreements were foisted upon us by our feckless elected representatives. I suspect the total number of jobs impacted is well over double that. That’s a guess. There are lots of conflicting statistics...depending on who you want to believe.
The EPI (Economic Policy Institute whose motto is "Research for Broadly Based Prosperity) has issued several reports.
In 2001 EPI said: (Any emphasis in blockquotes below is mine)
Rapidly growing foreign direct investment (FDI) in Canada and Mexico has played a key role in disrupting the balance in trade relations between NAFTA's participants. The number of factories in Mexico's maquiladora zones has increased more than 79% since 1993, and employment in these plants increased 139% in this period. More than 1.3 million workers were employed in more than 3,700 maquiladora plants in 2000. The mere threat that a U.S. company could open such a plant has been used to bully workers into accepting cuts in pay, benefits, and working conditions in many U.S. factories, as shown in several recent reports.
(Maquiladora – under this program the Mexican government allows the duty-free, temporary importation of raw materials, supplies, machinery and equipment, etc. as long as the product assembled or manufactured in Mexico is exported.)
In another report titled "NAFTA at SEVEN" EPI stated:
...between 1993 and 2000, U.S. domestic exports to its NAFTA partners increased rapidly-with real growth of 147% to Mexico and 66% to Canada. These increases, however, were overshadowed by the larger growth in imports, which have gone up by 248% from Mexico and 79% from Canada. The $16.6 billion U.S. trade deficit with these countries in 1993 increased by 378%, or $62.8 billion, by 2000 (all figures in inflation-adjusted 1992 dollars).
In 2003 the EPI said this about NAFTA and "free trade" agreements in general:
The result is one thing that almost everybody who studies trade now agrees upon. Whatever else they have wrought—more jobs, fewer jobs, more or less poverty—globalized trade and production coincide with greater inequality both within and between countries. The reasons for this are complex—globalization weakens unions, strengthens multinationals, and increases competition and insecurity all around—but the data are clear. Markets do not distribute wealth equitably.
I think we can all agree that we’ve seen our balance of trade deficit go completely out of sight since NAFTA was implemented. We can all agree that the inequities between the "haves" and "have-nots" have ballooned beyond our wildest dreams of economic disparity. I think we can all agree our unions have been weakened. I think we should all agree that the middle class and poor in America....most particularly Blacks, Hispanics, and Women....have been screwed and that the only winners have been the large corporations who’ve shipped our jobs overseas and returned inferior and unsafe products to our consumers....while pocketing healthy profits from cheap overseas labor.
I’m going to close this diary with a few things you need to think about:
First is a quote from a 1994 article about Clinton and NAFTA by Noam Chomsky in Z Magazine:
November 17 (the day NAFTA passed) was a grand day in the career of Bill Clinton, the day when he proved that he is a man of firm principle, and that his "vision" -- the term has become a journalistic reflex -- has real substance. "President Emerges As a Tough Fighter," the New York Times announced on the front page the next day. Washington correspondent R.W. Apple wrote that Clinton had now silenced his detractors, who had scorned him for his apparent willingness to back down on everything he claimed to stand for:
"Mr. Clinton retreated early on Bosnia, on Haiti, on homosexuals in the military, on important elements of his economic plan [namely, the minuscule stimulative package]; he seemed ready to compromise on all but the most basic elements of his health-care reforms. Critics asked whether he had a bottom line on anything. On NAFTA, he did, and that question won't be asked much for a while."
In short, on unimportant matters, involving nothing more than millions of lives, Clinton is a "pragmatist," ready to retreat. But when it comes to responding to the calls of the big money, our hero showed that he has backbone after all.
(You can read the whole article HERE and it’s fascinating!)
Second, Listen to Clinton’s remarks about the signing of NAFTA HERE. And remember Hillary’s laugh when asked about NAFTA during the November 15th debate...and her comment that, well, NAFTA was sort of a mistake "To the extent that it did not deliver like we thought it would."
Didn’t deliver? My god, NAFTA has been a train wreck both here and in Mexico...where worker productivity has gone up 60% and real wages decreased by 5%....contributing to the reason more people are seeking work here. Unfortunately The Clintons, who’ve never held a job involving real labor or much more than talking about labor, haven’t been impacted. Neither have the feckless wimps in Congress, Republican and Democrats alike, who folded to the corporate lobbyists and their money...and pressure from President Clinton...along with pork and prizes.
Those of you thinking about voting for Hillary, particularly because she’s a woman and think she’s attuned to women’s issues, consider this: Some of the biggest issues in America today are declining employment, declining wages, the declining value of the dollar, lack of affordable and available health care and the huge impact of those problems particularly on poor and middle class women. If you want more of the same...vote for Hillary. Remember who among the presidential candidates is supporting more Free Trade Agreement and who is opposed.
If you want to hear legitimate concerns dismissed with the time worn "well, perfect is the enemy of good" phrase that politicians use to excuse but not cure serious policy issues...vote for Hillary. She used a variant of this palliative phrase again last week in an environmental forum.
And finally, if you think NAFTA was a long ago program that isn’t growing in impact on American jobs today...consider this: Hershey’s, an Icon of AMERICAN industry and the nation’s largest candy maker is laying off or retiring 1500 workers and moving portions of their manufacturing to Monterrey, Mexico from Hershey, PA. Over 100 married couples who work at Hershey’s are expected to be impacted. Wonder what they’ll do for food? Wonder where the Clinton’s thought people like this, and the women on the apparel production lines, and the other manufacturing workers would find the jobs the Clinton’s were so anxious to give to Mexico? Think they care? Only if YOU finally wise up and get mad enough to vote the Clinton's off the American political landscape.