North American Free Trade Agreement

The following discussion argues that the merits of the case in favor of NAFTA are much stronger than the merits against it, and suggests that NAFTA has become a symbol, and in effect a hostage, of free-floating public anxiety about availability of jobs, the sluggish recovery from the recession of 1990-91, and the long-term stagnation of the American standard of living. Since all of the causes of this anxiety have developed without NAFTA, it is clear a priori that NAFTA cannot be the cause of them. Indeed, as we shall see, although it is ultimately impossible to predict the course of future events, enactment of NAFTA is far more likely to allev

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agencies that interpreted and enforced labor laws--was usually in the hands of Republicans who had no loyalty to unions, so labor laws came to be interpreted in a way less favorable to unions. These factors were secondary, however; the primary force tending to hold down job opportunities and wages was the more competitive international economic climate. The U.S. no longer had the world to itself. Thus, foreign economic competition came to be closely associated in the American public mind with straitened economic circumstances. In the 1980s, it was widely believed, the United States accepted unequal trade terms with newly industrialized countries, notably Japan, in which these countries gained free access to American markets while a tangle of informal barriers kept American goods out of their markets. Free trade, in the minds of large numbers of Americans, came to be associated with unfair trade, and with declining wages and vanishing job opportunities. In addition to competition from highly industrialized economies, another form of competition developed in the 1970s and 1980S. Improved communications and transportation allowed firms to set up production facilities practically anywhere in the world, at least under some c
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Approximate Word count = 4008
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)

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