SCUTTLING BAD TRADE AGREEMENTS

by Steven Yates
Posted January 14, 2006



It was back in 1993 that the federal government signed off on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Clinton crowd was all for it. Interestingly, mainstream Republicans were also talking it up (not that there is any difference between the two that makes a difference). Rush Limbaugh touted it on his talk radio show. Among those visible, only Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan had opposed it; the former’s reference to that “giant sucking sound� of jobs going south of America’s border and into Mexico is now legendary.

I didn’t know much about trade agreements back in the early 1990s. My research interests were elsewhere. But as the decade progressed and began to show that Perot and Buchanan had been right while the “establishmentâ€? had been wrongâ€â€