NAFTA’s Problems Need To Be Addressed
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
By Karl Rusnak
Economy In Crisis.org
When problems confront our nation, our elected leaders are supposed to address them. We created a problem for ourselves when we passed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the early 90s. It was evident to some at the time that it would be a problem, but many believed our elected officials when they said that it would create jobs. Over time, the opposite has proven to be true. We have lost hundreds of thousands of jobs as a result of 
NAFTA, but our politicians are doing nothing to fix this problem.
When NAFTA was being sold to the American people, it was touted as a job creator. NAFTA was supposed to usher in a new era of prosperity where menial jobs might be outsourced, but good high-end manufacturing and service sector jobs would replace them. Instead, what we have seen is a mass exodus of middle class manufacturing jobs, some of which have been replaced with low-wage service sector jobs. According to an Economic Policy Institute study, overall, NAFTA has cost us an estimated 682,900 jobs. That number takes into account jobs created as well, but does not take into account Americans who have taken lower-paying jobs as a result of NAFTA, so the actual damage is likely even greater.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that NAFTA has been damaging, no one in our government has done anything about it. Politicians talk about our illegal immigration problem, but they do not address the role that NAFTA has played in causing it. They talk about job creation, but they do not talk about stopping the job destruction that has occurred as a result of NAFTA.
Presidential candidates often play lip service to the idea of reforming or getting out of NAFTA. President Obama did this in 2008, but we have seen no signs of action since he has entered office. He is not the first politician to give this lip service either. Presidential candidates along with candidates for the Senate and House of Representatives have claimed they will do something about NAFTA, but few even make an attempt. Instead we plug along with new trade agreements like CAFTA and the new Korean free trade agreement. Instead of solving problems, like it is supposed to, our government is spending time creating new ones.
