Trump’s Triumphs: Dismantling NAFTA.
One of the president’s campaign promises was to renegotiate NAFTA. His administration did so as of August 31, and the new deal could be approved by Congress in early 2019.
So what IS NAFTA, and why is it a good thing that the Emperor-God has taken a machete to it? Moreover, why are swamp dwellers hypocrites for opposing the rewrite?
The North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement is a 1994 product of the Clinton administration. As one might expect, it’s complicated and varied; and its effects far reaching and often subtle. “Negotiated behind closed doors with hundreds of official corporate advisors, NAFTA was radically different than past trade deals that focused on traditional trade matters, like cutting border taxes. Instead, most of NAFTA's provisions grant new powers and privileges to multinational corporations.” (citizen.org) In short, NAFTA incentivizes US corporations to leave the country, taking jobs with them (1 million American jobs lost to date), and guts pro-America, pro-worker policies, like one requiring the US government to spend tax dollars on American-made goods.
The end result, over 25 years, lowered US wages, hurt US manufacturing and agriculture, and increased the US trade deficit. Critics says NAFTA destroyed the Mexican economy and drove millions from their homes (and into the US.)
To be fair, a 2013 New York Times articles sings NAFTA’s praises, claiming “Nafta was not about the net creation or destruction of U.S. jobs; it was about better jobs and lower costs.” “Better jobs for whom?” one might ask after realizing the restorative impact of the Trump administration’s common sense changes to the agreement. (A full list can be found at the ustr.gov site below.)
The new agreement requires:
1) Mexico to guarantee workers the right to secret ballot votes on their own unions and contracts. Who knew that Mexico has fake “protection” unions which approve low-wage contracts before work at a new plant even commences? If Mexican workers protest the $2 per hour wages at a plant that would pay $20 to $25 per hour to make the same product in the US, the Mexicans are fired for violating their phony “contract.” The secret-ballot vote requirement could help end that exploitation. (prospect.org)
2) the razing of NAFTA’s investor-state dispute settlement tribunals. ISDS is a system through which investors (that is, multi-national corporations) can sue countries for alleged discriminatory practices, grabbing compensation from taxpayers after attacking environmental and health policies that they claim undermine NAFTA investor rights.
3) a lift in the share of a good’s value that must be made in North America to 75 percent from 62.5 percent, a rule of origin widely criticized as allowing NAFTA benefits for goods comprised of parts made in China and other countries outside of North America.
Though it’s probably inaccurate to pin all of today’s political woes on NAFTA specifically, it does seems as if it laid the ground work for many of them: loss of work in the factory and farm towns of fly-over country, massive influx of illegals from Mexico, and the general dismantling of borders in favor of multi-national corporations. Think about it: if multi-national corporations can negotiate US trade deals, they run Washington… and much of the world. So, if Donald Trump was elected to drain the swamp, NAFTA is what made the swamp a particularly good home for alligators. No wonder the swamp wants to keep it. Politicians have spent 25 years getting rich off it. The Left abandoned the American worker and took up identity politics in part because of it.
By undoing NAFTA, the president is not only putting America first, he’s incentivizing Mexico and Canada to look after their own. He’s restoring a healthy sense of competition between businesses, and keeping politicians away from the national and international trough. He’s raising the standard of living for Mexico and helping ensure its citizens can make a home in their home country honestly, instead of risking life and limb to make one in the US illegally. And that in turn defends American workers. So, overhauling NAFTA is good for everybody, well, except globalists, corporatists and lobbyists. And it’s another brilliant strategic move by President Trump, the master of four dimensional chess, to make America great again.