True believers betrayed by their Messiah?

[Big Money]

Given NAFTA's record of damage, it is equal parts disgusting and infuriating that Obama has joined the corporate Pinocchios who lied about NAFTA, recycling similar claims to try to sell the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is NAFTA on steroids.


A 2012 Angus Reid Public Opinion poll found that 53 percent of Americans believe the U.S. should "do whatever is necessary" to "renegotiate" or "leave" NAFTA, while only 15 percent believe the U.S. should "continue to be a member of NAFTA."


That opposition cuts across party lines, class divisions and education levels, perhaps explaining the growing controversy over the proposed deepening and expansion of the NAFTA model through the TPP.


This transpartisan public opposition to NAFTA-style pacts is what underlies the growing transpartisan opposition in Congress to Obama's request that Congress delegate away its constitutional authorities through Fast Track trade authority.


Were it not for Fast Track's creation of a legislative luge run through Congress for NAFTA, the deal would not have been implemented.


It empowered a president to sign a trade agreement before Congress voted on it with a guarantee that the executive branch can write legislation not subject to committee markup that would implement the pact and alter wide swaths of existing U.S. law.


Fast Track guaranteed House and Senate votes on this bill within 90 days, with all floor amendments forbidden and a maximum of 20 hours of debate.


Rather than creating in any year the net 200,000 jobs per year promised by former President Bill Clinton on the basis of Peterson Institute for International Economics projections, job loss from NAFTA began rapidly.


Now the same interests that dished out lies to sell NAFTA are at it again to push the TPP.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/nafta-at-20-one-million-u_b_4550207.html

 

[Robo]

NAFTA’s Impact on Employment
• Posted on July 7, 2008
8
Q: How many U.S. jobs have been lost since the inception of the North American Free Trade Agreement?
A: Actually, nearly 25 million jobs have been gained. Nearly all economic studies say NAFTA's net effect on jobs was negligible.
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/07/naftas-impact-on-employment/

Seems as though Ross Perot’s “Great Sucking Sound” never quite came to fruition, huh?

I’ve never seen any credible evidence one way or the other that NAFTA had any NET effect on the economy. Oh sure we can find many, many claims that millions of jobs were lost, but do those claims ever balance that claim with facts of jobs gained?

 

[Big Money]

Isn't Factcheck.org an Annenberg organ?

According to a report by Economic Policy Institute economist Robert Scott, entitled "Heading South: U.S.-Mexico trade and job displacement after NAFTA," an estimated 682,900 U.S. jobs have been "lost or displaced" because of the agreement and the resulting trade deficit.

In 1993, before the signing of NAFTA, the U.S. held a $1.6 billion trade surplus over their neighbor to the south, which supported 29,400 jobs.


By 1997, the tides had turned, and Mexico laid claim to a much larger surplus of $16.6 billion.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/12/nafta-job-loss-trade-deficit-epi_n_859983.html

Yet Democrats continue to defend BJ Clinton and Obama, don't they?

 

[Robo]

Isn't Factcheck.org an Annenberg organ?

According to a report by Economic Policy Institute economist Robert Scott, entitled "Heading South: U.S.-Mexico trade and job displacement after NAFTA," an estimated 682,900 U.S. jobs have been "lost or displaced" because of the agreement and the resulting trade deficit.

In 1993, before the signing of NAFTA, the U.S. held a $1.6 billion trade surplus over their neighbor to the south, which supported 29,400 jobs.


By 1997, the tides had turned, and Mexico laid claim to a much larger surplus of $16.6 billion.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/12/nafta-job-loss-trade-deficit-epi_n_859983.html

Yet Democrats continue to defend BJ Clinton and Obama, don't they?

If Mexico has been the NET benefactor of NAFTA, and America has suffered Ross Perot’s “Great Sucking Sound,” how come so many Mexicans risk their lives getting into America to work? Gee we must have had way too many fucking jobs to begin with, huh BM? Maybe we could afford to give some up, huh?

Here’s more on the facts or fiction about NAFTA.

NAFTA has produced a disappointingly small net gain in jobs in Mexico. Data limitations preclude an exact tally, but it is clear that jobs created in export manufacturing have barely kept pace with jobs lost in agriculture due to imports. There has also been a decline in domestic manufacturing employment, related in part to import competition and perhaps also to the substitution of foreign inputs in assembly operations. About 30 percent of the jobs that were created in the maquiladora assembly plants in the 1990s have since disappeared. Many of these operations were relocated to lower- wage countries, particularly China. http://carnegieendowment.org/2004/0...roductivity-and-income-decade-after-nafta/8te

Doing a Job on NAFTA

While Senator Barack Obama has been embroiled in a controversy over what his campaign team did or did not tell the Canadians about the North American Free Trade Agreement, his real sin has gone unnoticed. Obama attacks NAFTA because, he asserts, it cost America 1 million jobs. That number reflects either a willful disregard of the facts or a poor command of economics.
After 14 years, you’d think we’d have a pretty good grasp of NAFTA’s economic impact. How hard can it be to tally up jobs gained and jobs lost and settle on a number? Actually, it’s pretty hard. And a presidential candidate who recklessly plucks one number from the bunch may encourage support for some disastrously bad policy decisions.
If nothing else had happened after NAFTA came into force in 1994, we could just look at the overall change in jobs since then. In 1993, U.S. civilian employment was 120 million. Last year it was 146 million. So does that mean NAFTA created 26 million jobs?
Of course not. Plenty of other things did happen after NAFTA took effect. Young children grew up and joined the work force. We had an information technology revolution. Recessions came and went, both in the United States and in Mexico. Even on the trade front, NAFTA was quickly followed by a much broader agreement that created the World Trade Organization. http://american.com/archive/2008/march-02-08/doing-a-job-on-nafta

 

[Big Money]

So you endorse NAFTA?

 

[Robo]

So you endorse NAFTA?

I don't endorse much of anything the fucking feds do! If NAFTA were the worst of it, we'd be living high on the hog. At least NAFTA is constitutional. That's way the fuck more than can be said for most of the other shit that the sons-of-bitches in Washington do!!!!!