NAFTA

The Argument

NAFTA and similar trade agreements are weakening America. NAFTA was designed by and for the multinational corporations and banks—a strategy for Wall Street, not for Main Street. It encourages companies to ship our inventions, technologies and jobs abroad where they can take advantage of minimal safety, environmental and labor standards. That needs to change.

Progressive Solution

We’ve got to stop approving trade agreements modeled after NAFTA. Instead, we need to renegotiate NAFTA and other current trade agreements so that they work for American workers. We need new trade rules that help raise up safety, environmental and labor standards abroad, rather than driving them down here. And we must restore our position as the best country in the world for both business and labor by investing in bridges and roads, mass transit, broadband access, energy independence, new “green” technologies, and better schools.

Fast Facts

Americans strongly believe that NAFTA and similar trade agreements have hurt our economy. Fifty percent of Americans think “free international trade has hurt the economy” while only 26 percent think it “has helped the economy.” Fifty-eight percent say globalization is “bad because it has subjected American companies and employees to unfair competition and cheap labor” while only 25 percent say it is “good.” Moreover, nearly half of all Americans believe that free trade agreements have hurt their personal financial situation, while only 27 percent believe such agreements have “helped.” [PollingReport.com]

NAFTA has cost more than one million U.S. jobs. NAFTA advocates promised that the treaty would create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the U.S. Instead, trade deficits with Mexico and Canada have displaced over one million U.S. jobs. Roughly 660,000 of the lost jobs were in manufacturing. [Economic Policy Institute]

NAFTA has driven down U.S. wages. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, the one million Americans whose jobs were displaced by NAFTA were forced to take a pay cut of about 18 percent. Because of NAFTA, U.S. workers lost wages totaling about $7.6 billion in 2004 alone.