Detroit City The NAFTA Disaster

[Teamster Jeff]

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What was once upon a time a thriving, wealthy city built on blue-collar manufacturing and hard work, has today been decimated into Americas capital of crime, unemployment, school dropout and house foreclosures that leave streets looking like ghost towns, what has happened to Detroit?

What started with president George H Bush in December of 1992 ended with president Bill Clinton on December 8, 1993. In his remarks before he signed the North American Free Trade Agreement into law Bill Clinton said that NAFTA would promote “more growth, more equality, better preservation of the environment, and a greater possibility of world peace”.

He also said it would create 200,000 jobs, he didn’t say in which country. He also failed to mention what would happen if he was wrong.

What if NAFTA lost American jobs instead of creating them like Bill Clinton said? About ten years after NAFTA was signed by Bill Clinton The Economic Policy Institute published a report by Robert E. Scott that documented 879,280 jobs were “displaced”. That would mean instead of adding 200,000 jobs like Bill Clinton said more than 4 times that many jobs have been lost.

Imagine what losing nearly 900,000 jobs from an economy would look like? Actually you don’t have to imagine just visit Detroit, Michigan USA and you can see it for yourself.
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http://iqunlimited.org/2013/06/11/detroit-city-the-nafta-disaster/

[Recursion]

1. It created jobs unequally in different parts of the US, but that was already true

US coastal cities did well, and US farms did very very well (US trade policy is always actually about selling soybeans, wheat, and corn). Central US cities did horribly, with the result that a lot of people left them for coastal cities. But that had started in the 1970s, and wasn't going to stop if NAFTA hadn't happened; NAFTA was just a way for the government to have some say in how it happened.

[Populist_Prole]

3. True. It only looks good in the macro sense

Not the real world sense. In any case, it's not that a "job" is a job is a job. If good jobs are replaced with lousy ones, it may look OK statistically but those actually affected have less money, and so there goes the demand.

I've sparred for many years on online forums with conservatives and neoliberals over the corrosive effects of NAFTA and other trade agreements. Some actually did admit that the whole "it'll be good for US exports to Mexico" angle they tried to sell it with was BS. It was always about labor arbitrage.

[TheMastersNemesis]

2. Detroit And Michigan Are The GOP Plan For All Of Us. Why Would We Not Get Hostile With Them?

What I have said may sound harsh and radical. In time confrontation with GOP legislators will be the only option left. They have made it clear they will tolerate NO opposition. The GOP has already done major damage to the country and working people. They plan major damage or elimination of women's rights as well.

The Detroit plan is about ending all pension systems, safety nets, and public service jobs. And it is about replacing everything with RW GOP crony contractors.

[rhett o rick]

4. Blaming only Republicans is counter productive.

Concentrating on Republicans distracts from the true battle with the 1% oligarchs. The oligarchs have a lot of help from Democrats. We need to clean up our party before we go after the Republicans.

While it may be true that any Democrat is better than all Republicans, it's also true that if we cant fix our Party, we are lost.

[Demo_Chris]

5. NAFTA was signed by our party. Like insurance mandates WE own it. nt