On April 22, 2015, Don Lee writes in the Los Angeles Times:
As lawmakers gear up for a rancorous debate on a bill that would help President Obama secure a massive Pacific Rim trade deal, congressional Democrats and their allies are making the case that such an agreement would be disastrous for American jobs and wages.
For many, Exhibit No. 1 is the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Perhaps more than anything else, the 1993 pact among the U.S., Mexico and Canada has colored perceptions of free trade and points to the difficult battle ahead as the White House argues alongside Republicans that the Trans-Pacific Partnership would be good for ordinary Americans.
Moments after the so-called fast-track legislation was introduced last week to ease passage of a trade agreement, Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) expressed a sentiment typical of many opponents of the bill. It “will pave the way for another NAFTA-style deal that costs jobs,” Casey said, repeating the warning at a Senate committee hearing Tuesday.
Surveys indicate that qualms about NAFTA are pervasive among the public as well, even with those too young to remember it.
“They promised 200,000 jobs, and we lost millions,” said Michael Barnett, 35, a Fontana hospital worker who flew to Washington with his steelworkers union last week for an anti-fast-track rally outside the Capitol.
Former President Clinton, who pushed NAFTA through a bitterly divided Congress, sold the agreement partly by saying it would create 200,000 jobs a year for Americans. The estimate, derived from experts at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, proved to be hype.
At the same time, claims from the other side that the U.S. would lose millions of jobs to Mexico — the “great sucking sound,” as presidential candidate Ross Perot put it in 1992 — turned out to be overblown as well.
