By: John Golden Some say that trade agreements are bad for societies because they allow people from other countries to take jobs created by Americans. We’ve all heard the cries that “The Mexicans are taking our jobs!” With the TPP vote approaching and America on a path to enter a new free trade agreement, it is important to ask the question; are maquiladoras taking American’s jobs, and would this loss be such a bad thing? First off, the answer to the question of whether NAFTA took American’s jobs is both yes and no. NAFTA definitely shut down some American factories, and a lot of low skills workers in America were forced to find work elsewhere, often without a place to turn and requiring substantial amounts of education to get back into the workforce. Gone with the tariffs were many blue collar low-skilled manufacturing jobs and potentially even the label “Made in America.” However, NAFTA did not kill American manufacturing. In fact, American manufacturing was strengthened as NAFTA helped to create jobs in the skill-intensive manufacturing and the programming industry. These jobs and the synergies created from comparative advantage in trade more than made up for the jobs loss with job growth in better paying sectors. A lot of the workers displaced after NAFTA had trouble getting back to work, often requiring complex programs to retrain them for work in other sectors. Many elderly found no work at all. However, the truth about the jobs NAFTA lost America is that they were not going to be here forever. They were in low-tech low-skilled fields that Americans simply were not willing to do for cheap enough. Losing those jobs had two major positive effects. First, those workers were able to be retrained before it became too late, and the costs of products went down in America stimulating the overall economy. We could have locked the doors to save jobs, but that would not have in the end saved jobs or boosted standard of living. In the end, jobs that cannot be saved must be cut. This is something to consider when thinking about the TPP, which will create far more intellectual property and high tech jobs than it will destroy. Read more about NAFTA and the economy here: http://www.cato.org/publications/free-trade-bulletin/nafta-10-economic-foreign-policy-success Read more about trade and the economy here: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/globalization/global_flows_in_a_digital_age Learn more about the debate over the TPP here: https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/05/why-we-need-to-make-the-case-for-freer-trade/ Sign the petition for the TPP and freer trade here: https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/05/why-we-need-to-make-the-case-for-freer-trade/ Sign the petition for freer trade with Cuba and more free trade globally here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/End-the-Cuba-Embargo-Now/109994522362677
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