NAFTA’s Successes

An op-ed today in the San Diego Tribune outlines the many economic benefits the United States has experienced since the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993. According to the Tribune:

Its adoption in 1993 helped kick off one of the great periods of sustained economic health in U.S. history. The resulting explosion in trade with Canada and Mexico was crucial to the creation of more than 17 million new jobs, resulting in a five-year stretch in which the jobless rate was under 5 percent every year for only the second time since World War II.

Yet the article remains fearful of the anti-trade stance of the majority of the Democratic presidential candidates and what economic prospects lie ahead if we continue down our recent path where trade agreements with Korea and Latin America were recently blocked. Read more here.