Disastrous Effects of NAFTA 16 years later

On January 1, 2010 Americans mourned the sixteenth anniversary of the implementation of the deleterious “free trade” agreement that is the North American Free Trade Agreement.

On January 1, 2010 Americans mourned the sixteenth anniversary of the implementation of the deleterious “free trade” agreement that is the North American Free Trade Agreement, now it is just as important to look back and examine what an utter disaster it has been for the United States.

Proponents of NAFTA asserted that the agreement would create hundreds of thousands of jobs in America, Canada and Mexico. They promised to turn a small trade surplus with Mexico into a huge surplus that would benefit all three countries involved. Illegal immigration would be a thing of the past as jobs in Mexico would be plentiful and lucrative. Free traders talked openly of cheaper goods for American consumers with newfound purchasing power and unprecedented surges in exports to markets never before opened to U.S. products. Of course, none of that panned out and those free trade advocates failed to mention what the biggest U.S. export would be: good-paying American jobs.

“NAFTA is really less about trade than it is about investment,” former presidential candidate Ross Perot once said of NAFTA. “Its principal goal is to protect US companies and investors operating in Mexico. The text of the agreement is contained in two volumes covering more than 1,100 pages. Buried in the fine print are provisions that will give away American jobs and radically reduce the sovereignty of the US.”

Prior to the implementation of NAFTA, the U.S. held a small trade surplus with Mexico of approximately $10 million. By 2007, that surplus had turned into an astounding $91 billion trade deficit. With Canada and Mexico combined, the U.S. has taken a $24 billion trade deficit prior to NAFTA and turned it into a $190 billion deficit – a 691 percent increase.

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