FREE TRADE DESERVES A FAST TRACK
Ross perot's description of the giant sucking sound- of jobs being lost to Mexico from the North American Free Trade Agreement(NAFTA was one of the most memorable phrases of the 1992 Presidential election- but it turned out to be wrong There was no sucking sound, and only a few American jobs were lost. Indeed, NAFTA succeeded in a key goal promoting trade between Mexico and the U.S. And the removal of barriers boosted trade in both directions, so that U.S. trade with Mexico is far better balanced than it is with other trading partners. The U.S. trade deficit with Mexico is 10% of total trade between the two(exports plus imports). For Japan the figure is 38% and for China it's 72%
NAFTA has also helped the us. economy in a more subtle way that hasn't been as widely appreciated with or without NAFTA, low-skilled jobs would have left the US. NAFTA helped direct many of those jobs to Mexico instead of 3ny. China By keeping those jobs close to home, NAFTA encouraged production shar ing-the swapping of parts back and forth across the border in ways that take advantage of each country's strengths. Plastic molding operations in El Paso, for example, make parts that are shipped to Mexico for others to assemble. If those assembly jobs had gone to China, it's likely that the molding jobs would have gone with them rather than remaining in the U.S.