In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed us up for the North American Free Trade Agreement (“NAFTA”). The treaty was aimed at encouraging trade in the Western Hemisphere and some economists credit the deal with growing the U.S. economy by as much as half a percentage point in the ensuing years. Whatever we may or may not have gained, the deal came at a cost to the auto-manufacturing sector... The increasing imbalance between wage earners and the companies that employ them has little to do with minimum-wage issues and everything to do with globalist economic policy that has encouraged the offshoring of jobs that we’ve seen over the last two decades. NAFTA had a negative effect on auto- manufacturing jobs. Hundreds of thousands of American auto workers saw their jobs moved off-shore to Mexico. According to the Center for Economic Research and the Economic Policy Institute, more than 600,000 jobs that were lost in the ensuing years were a result of job displacement to Mexico. It wasn’t until the repeal of NAFTA that a lot of those jobs came back to U.S. workers. But NAFTA was just the tip of the iceberg. The biggest hit to American workers and American wages came as a result of our trade deals with China.
through a negotiation between capital and labor what we’re willing to work for. In other words, a capitalist system assumes that the people themselves have the power, not the state. And shouldn’t we want to keep it that way? AN OUT-OF-WHACK CAPITAL- LABOR EQUATION Like AOC, I want workers to earn more, too. And I want businesses to earn more. And I want American citizens to enjoy a tremendous quality of life. I want our entire economy to thrive in ways that will continue to propel our nation forward for many generations. But we need to be smart about how we get there. There is an imbalance in the capital-labor equation. Sanders and AOC and others are not wrong when they cite this issue. It’s terrible that the most productive economy on Earth has so many people still living in poverty. And it’s not right that you can no longer get a decent paying job to take care of your family in this country. It used to be that you could graduate from trade school or high school (or not even graduate) and land a good job at the local factory where you made a decent enough wage to provide for your family and eventually retire. Nowadays, it’s pretty hard to do that. But the increasing imbalance between wage earners and the companies that employ them has little to do with minimum-wage issues and everything to do with globalist economic policy that has encouraged the offshoring of jobs that we’ve seen over the last two decades.
American Consequences
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