I remember who strongly opposing NAFTA in 1992. He was right about its consequences, particularly about the loss of American jobs.
No one knows for sure what's in TPA -- and it's not actually a trade deal itself. However, the fact that so many foreign governments are thrilled about it and are spending money to lobby for its passage tells me all I need to know about it: It will be a good deal for other countries and a bad deal for the United States -- at least a bad deal for Average Joe.
From Wikipedia:
The "giant sucking sound" was United States Presidential candidate Ross Perot's colorful phrase for what he believed would be the negative effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he opposed.
In the second 1992 Presidential Debate, Ross Perot argued:
We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It's pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor ... have no health care — that's the most expensive single element in making a car— have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south.
... when [Mexico's] jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it's leveled again. But in the meantime, you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals.
Perot didn't get elected, of course, and he won no electoral votes. However, his 19,743,821 and 18.9% of the popular vote was more than any non-major-party candidate since George Wallace in 1968. Wallace got 46 electoral votes, 9,901,118 popular votes, and 13.5% of the popular vote. That wasn't enough to keep Nixon out of the White House (301 electoral votes).
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