Report: NAFTA Has Cost 683,000 Jobs—and Counting [View All]

[Donnachaidh]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/05/03/report-nafta-has-cost-683000-jobs-and-counting/



To date, 682,900 U.S. jobs have been lost or displaced since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in 1994, a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) study finds. The main reason for the job loss is a $97.2 billion trade deficit with Mexico. In 1993, one year before NAFTA was implemented, the United States had a $1.6 billion trade surplus with Mexico that supported nearly 30,000 U.S. jobs.

All 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have seen jobs lost or displaced to Mexico in the past 17 years, says Robert Scott, EPI’s senior international economist and author of “Heading South: U.S.-Mexico trade and job displacement after NAFTA.”



During a phone conference today, Scott said NAFTA supporters argued the pact would create jobs in the United States. Backers of proposed trade deals with South Korea and Colombia are making similar claims, he said. But his research has shown that each trade agreement would cost thousands of U.S. jobs. In the first eight years, the current deal with Korea could cost 159,000 jobs, he said, and Colombia could swallow up 60,000 U.S. jobs.

Scott found the five states that experienced the largest percentage of local jobs displaced by trade with Mexico since NAFTA began are Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. The five that have the largest actual number of jobs displaced due to Mexico trade deficits are California, Texas, Michigan, Ohio and Illinois. (Check out the map above.)

More at the link --