How did we go from a debate to repeal NAFTA

[onecaliberal]

To NAFTA on steroids? What the hell kind of jobs do they think will be left? We are still not at the employment level we were before Bushco left office. We cannot compete with third world country wages.
Not to mention the current trade deficit and currency manipulation.
All that being said it would be game over for the environment.

[99Forever]

1. How?

Think triangulation and capitulation.

[Man from Pickens]

2. NAFTA is a very serious oh look a squirrel

that's basically how it went down, in a nutshell

[Baitball Blogger]

3. LOL!

[Doctor_J]

4. "The president's a good father and his family is adorable

So whatever he does must be good for us."

Personality cult have abandoned rationality for hero worship. Unfortunately they destroyed the party as well

[onecaliberal]

5. ^^that^^

[Ed Suspicious]

6. Yes.

[sabrina 1]

19. Yes, so true.

[Mojorabbit]

23. word nt

[Spitfire of ATJ]

7. Obama was a community organizer helping people who lost their steelworker jobs....

He should know better.

Someone told him this was going to be part of his legacy.

The people who told him that have no problem with America having more of this:

[Populist_Prole]

8. Good point about the dirty, sordid truth

I thought the exact same thing.

He sounded all populistic as a candidate, didn't touch that campaign ditty with a ten foot pole as a president; then went on to push something even more comprehensively worse than NAFTA.

[sabrina 1]

20. We were blinded by hope. I was, even when there were warning signs, the FISA Bill Amendment eg. But

we were also traumatized by eight years of Bush/Cheney.

We are, most of us anyhow, over that.

I need to see a long, long record of walking the walk now, which is why I want someone who has been around long enough whose record is available for us to see, who has been consistent over the years, decades preferably, and do not care about hair, personal lives, etc. Just how they did their job for the people.

[Elwood P Dowd]

9. NAFTA created 22 million net new jobs. Didn't you know that?

The free traitor group of 12 here on DU that claim they know all things about trade say its so. They also say that billions of dollars in trade deficits every year is good for us, and that real wages for the middle class are at an all time high. Happy days are here again.

[Recursion]

10. Real wages for the middle class are at an all time high

Though it's not very much higher at all than 40 years ago.

[Elwood P Dowd]

11. Stats on real wages they use today are a joke.

Some of them don't even include a CPI that factors in food and energy costs. They also have all these creative substitution tricks to mask real world inflation. Our own government agencies that compute this have been taken over by corporate lobbyists, lawyers, and bean counters. Anybody that claims real wages for the majority of Americans are higher than they were 40 years ago has an agenda. Why don't you take your corporate propaganda and talking points somewhere else where they will actually believe it. Most of us don't believe a word of that trash.

[PowerToThePeople]

12. DUrec. n/t

[Recursion]

13. No, that's a myth. The core CPI isn't used to calculate much of anything except Fed rates.

The CPI-U is what the Census uses, and it includes food and energy, and the census shows the median wage and income at an all time high, and the wage and income at each quintile at an all time high.

They also have all these creative substitution tricks to mask real world inflation

Thank you for parroting Glenn Beck paranoia on DU.

Anybody that claims real wages for the majority of Americans are higher than they were 40 years ago has an agenda.

No, it just means we can add and subtract.

[Elwood P Dowd]

18. I hate Glenn Beck, and I damn sure know better than to believe crap from the Census Bureau

or any of these compromised corporate run government agencies.

The government calculates the COLA for my Social Security with their CPI. What a joke! The cost increases I've seen the past 6 years on just 3 items, energy costs (electric bills/gas heating), food, and prescription drugs, swamp my little increase from SS. They use so many tricks and substitutions that the tiny increases now just make me laugh.

[sabrina 1]

21. That was a joke, right?

[Recursion]

22. No. The census helpfully publishes these numbers

Middle class wages have been basically stagnant for 40 years, but they're still (slightly) higher in inflation adjusted terms than ever before.

[former9thward]

24. No they are not.

The highest was in Jan, 1973



According to the BLS, the average hourly wage for non-management private-sector workers last month was $20.67, unchanged from August and 2.3% above the average wage a year earlier. That’s not much, especially when compared with the pre-Great Recession years of 2006 and 2007, when the average hourly wage often increased by around 4% year-over-year. (During the high-inflation years of the 1970s and early 1980s, average wages commonly jumped 8%, 9% or even more year-over-year.)

But after adjusting for inflation, today’s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power as it did in 1979, following a long slide in the 1980s and early 1990s and bumpy, inconsistent growth since then. In fact, in real terms the average wage peaked more than 40 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 has the same purchasing power as $22.41 would today.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

[onecaliberal]

16. I have read a lot of the threads. Don't buy any of it.

It's beyond absurd to suggest these trade agreements are anything more that complete sellout of all industry. America can't compete with other countries who pay 5 cents an hour.

[nationalize the fed]

14. For the record: Keith Olbermann Hosts The 2007 AFL-CIO Democratic Debate

Wherein all manner of things are admitted (NAFTA was a "Mistake&quot and promised, knowing that the promises will be forgotten in a week or so...

The "Free Trade" segment starts at 18:18

Candidate Obama at 26:50 "Look- People don't want a cheaper t shirt if they're losing a job in the process"

[onecaliberal]

15. Yes when I speak of the debate to repeal this is precisely what I'm referring to

Thanks so much for digging this up!!!

[BainsBane]

17. Obama said he would renegotiate it, not repeal it

But I knew at the time he didn't mean it. I didn't have that reaction to other responses he made, but I could tell that one was pandering.

[Egnever]

25. Isn't that what he is trying to do?

[BainsBane]

26. TPP isn't NAFTA

They don't include the same member nations.

[Egnever]

27. Fair enough

[Exilednight]

28. You're right. They're nations with with even cheaper labor, lower

Environmental protections and fewer worker rights.

What could possibly go wrong?

I'll make this as simple as possible. Trade agreements are not about raising the standard of living in 3rd world and emerging markets. They're about lowering standards here at home

It's a race to the bottom.