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Democratic President Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement that went into effect on Jan. 1, 1994. The deal was fiercely opposed by labor unions and some environmentalists but backed by Clinton, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and a coalition that included the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Now, Trump is making trade deals front and center in his White House comeback bid as Harris struggles to connect with rank-and-file union workers, especially men, who have been leery of the Biden-Harris push for green vehicles. The disconnect could be enough to shatter the blue wall and once again propel Trump to the presidency.
“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 … and you don’t care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south,” he warned. What’s more, Friedman added, even the jobs that remained often paid lower wages, as corporations had more negotiating leverage in threatening to move to another country. On the business side, if a competitor was enjoying lower labor costs via outsourcing, that put pressure on other firms in the same sector to do the same.
It’s part of a wider play to get union voters, who are overrepresented in the crucial Rust Belt swing states, into his camp. Trump has also pledged togovernment subsidies for electric vehicles, which he says will put blue-collar employees out of work to make cars that most consumers don’t want.While NAFTA only affects trade with Canada and Mexico, it is considered a bellwether in a larger movement toward free trade, which was continued when China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
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