the treaty and hailed it a major U.S. victory; by November, it had been signed into law.What emerged from these back-room dealings was a monumentally flawed agreement. On the issue of job creation, the central focus of pro-NAFTA campaigning, it is fair to measure NAFTA's real-life results against its supporters' expansive promises of hundreds of thousands of new, high paying U.S. jobs. However, even measured against more lenient "do no harm" standard, NAFTA has been a failure. Consider this recent opinion poll of Americans on NAFTA's performance: 66% of Americans believe that free trade agreements between the U.S. and other countries cost the U.S. jobs. 66% of Americans believe that NAFTA has helped large corporations. 73% of Americans believe that NAFTA has not helped small business in the U.S. 58% of Americans agree that foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy because cheap imports have cost wages and jobs here. 81% of Americans say that Congress should not accept trade agreements that give other countries the power to overturn U.S. laws on consumer safety, labor or the environment.Clearly NAFTA has led to widespread job loss, with more than 200,000 U.S. workers certified as NAFTA casualties under just one narrow government program. Since the 1970's, there has been a steady trickle of manufacturing jobs heading south of the border; American companies found that moving their factories to Mexico, where the minimum wage is 58 per hour and environmental laws are rarely enforced, lowered their production costs even though the U.S. maintained tariffs on the import of those items. Mexico began to actively seek out U.S. manufacturers in 1972 after the passage of the Maquiladoras Act. Notwithstanding the fact that job growth totally unrelated to NAFTA has produced a net gain in the U.S. employment picture during this period, it in no way changes the reality that NAFTA has cost many individual workers their jobsmost of whom are now unem...
