This prescient cartoon came out right after NAFTA went into effect in 1994. Twenty-two years later, it still applies.
Posted on 07/06/2016 5:33:12 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Sometimes when the field doesn’t produce, the farmer plows it under.
What exactly does he want to change?
Hi Clinton !
Where you been?
I’m not your wet nurse.
Google it.
He got here three days ago.
RB,
Welcome to FreeRepublic!
Eddie01
1. It has kept Quebec in Canada (it would be pointless for Quebec to secede, since they would be at a serious disadvantage unless they accepted terms under NAFTA that would defeat the purpose of their secession anyway).
2. It has effectively eliminated state control of the oil industry in both Canada and Mexico.
3. (Related to #2) It has pushed Canada and Mexico ahead of Saudi Arabia as the largest foreign suppliers of oil to the U.S.
A U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA would be a total disaster.
Actually Trump wants to renegotiate NAFTA if possible so the US benefits. If that’s not possible then haste LA vista baby.
“NAFTA is a benefit to America”.
NAFTA was one of the early Agenda 21/Sustainable Development Agreements. Listed in the Preamble under Goals is: Promote Sustainable Development. Sustainable Development is the UN “Plan for the 21st Century” to control all human activity and redistribute the wealth of the nation to third world countries. Communist dictatorships go to the front of the line. Nothing about Agenda 21/ Sustainable Development is meant to benefit America.
If you really want to see something benefit America and Make America Great Again: UNexit.
wealth originates from growing something, mining something, or manufacturing something.
Mining and growing cannot be moved, so mining and growing are relatively constant wrt trade.
NAFTA moved much manufacturing, one of the three primary sources of wealth, from the USA to Mexico.
So how is NAFTA a benefit to America?
You forgot to mention Smoot.
We get cheaper goods and our financial industry profits as well.
It is looking key this - either you learned about the benefits of free trade by studying college level economics or you are doomed to be a protectionist.
Those professors teaching the classes, and the people writing the books had an agenda. The agenda was not ever meant to benefit most people here in the US.
NAFTA needs to be renegotiated or canned.
Yep - and all those who try to scare us depict that he'll tear a bloody gaping hole in the whole thing and leave it to fester...
I’m not your wet nurse.
Google it.
Welcome to FreeRepublic!
Thank you. The warmth of your welcome was appreciated.
It was a serious question. Under NAFTA, Canada and Mexico don't put tariffs on our goods and we don't put tariffs on theirs. U.S. companies receive benefits for doing business in Mexico and Canada and their companies receive benefits for doing business here. How does President Trump improve on that? How does he make it a better deal for us without putting restrictions on Canada and Mexico, and how does he get them to agree without putting similar restrictions on us? What does his "better deal" look like?
RB,
Trump has stated he will tax goods coming back to neutralize low Mexican labor rates and take away the incentive for US companies to move jobs south.
What else Trump has planned he would most likely keep close to the vest to maintain negotiating power.
This article provides some incite into Trumps plans to renegotiate multiple trade agreements.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-idUSKCN0ZE0Z0
The salient difference is that the average income goes up but that median income goes down since more people are
“dislocated” as a result of “harmonization” with a third world country labor force. Most of the profits go to the multinationals. The manufacturing jobs as a source of wealth for ordinary people (their labor) are gone to the third world country. Those people have to go back to school and learn a new skill— several years, plus uncertainty. Also, older workers suffer more because after that retraining, they face age discrimination and so are not as likely to be hired at lower rungs of the career ladder, or disqualified due to age (eg armed forces, police, fire). So over time the economy shifts to a service economy— think mccdonalds, motel 6. service jobs are lower paid jobs.
The benefits of tariffs are overlooked in the contemporary economics books. the USA government was financed through tariffs from roughly 1781 to up until the income tax in 1913, which itself probably was not viewed by most as significantly burdensome until after WWII. So protectionism is doomed? If you had been around in 1776, it seems as if you probably would have been a Tory with your anti-tariff bias, yes? After all the nascent USA would have been “doomed” by protectionism, according to your economic gospel. Fortunately you were not around then and the USA did just fine, and your anti-protectionist-doom-prediction “argument” fails by a real life counterexample of our own country.
You should look beyond the GDP and other such agreggates to measures of individual well-being and standard of living.
“Harmonization” can work down as well as up. Are you seriously suggesting that we downwards-harmonize in the direction of Mexico’s labor rates, Mexico’s child labor laws, and Mexico’s environmental pollution laws? —Because that is the economic effect of NAFTA, as measured in median well being.
You choose median wellbeing as a “fair” judge of what trade policies are good or bad. I prefer to think from a military perspective. Large aggregate GDP (which free trade facilitates) promotes a stronger military as weapons may be purchased. Potential soldiers are more plentiful if I were to buy into your median income argument.
This prescient cartoon came out right after NAFTA went into effect in 1994. Twenty-two years later, it still applies.
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