My own take is that there are a number of factors causing the situation. One is a consistent failure of US management to keep up with changing consumer demand. The auto industry ceded the low end of the market to the Japanese in the 70's. The profit margin on high end cars was good, while the low end was not worth fooling around with. This was a fatal error, it allowed new brand names in autos.

Can see the same path in other industries. Cede the low end, eventually face competition on the high end. Shoes are an example. First the flood of inexpensive product. Then the arrival of top of the line Euro brands.

I'm not opposed to trade, at all, but I think our trade deals have been structured very, very poorly. I'm less interested in squeezing out every bit of productivity and GDP, and more interested in how it's worked out in terms of income inequality. NAFTA and other such deals have built the wealth of the top hugely, IMO, but really haven't filtered down to helping people below, and instead have only increased downward pressure on wages at lower skill jobs (and increasingly this is true of more skilled work as well).

People can't be expected to totally retrain every couple of years as whole industries offshore. Top line economic efficiency doesn't consider impacts on particular groups of people, but those are important to me, too -- I don't just want economic growth in general, I want well balanced growth. GDP strikes me overall as a very poor indicator of overall economic health, given that it doesn't catch vast inequalities there.

And I have a hard time liking any argument that analyzes us primarily as consumers -- seems to me that wages haven't kept up with inflation, so sure, people can buy cheap plastic stuff, but they still earn less in real terms. Frankly, if it weren't for the ever cheaper plastic stuff, the working class would've been toast a while ago in these conditions, but that's a feedback loop. My standard is a little higher than "can they buy plastic lawn chairs and particleboard furniture". They're not able to meaningfully save or invest in much of anything for longer term economic health -- that's a real problem.

I do think that's about vastly more than NAFTA, though, which has become sort of representative in many people's minds of much of our trade in general.

any disruptive effects on employment were small. Trade opens foreign markets for American producers and gives consumers more choices, while competition spurs productivity growth at home.

The errors inherent in this are:

"any disruptive effects on employment were small."

"Trade opens foreign markets for American producers"

"and gives consumers more choices,"

"while competition spurs productivity growth at home."

I meant to say:

NAFTA is not responsible for the serious decline in American manufacturing. Off-shoring of industrial capacity is. Textile manufacturing went to the Caribbean, Central America and South Asia. Electronics to Taiwan, Malaysia, Korea, and now China. Heavy industry the world over but primarily East Asia. And now seemingly safe clerical, customer service and professional jobs to India. When I worked on Wall Street we started outsourcing basic accounting to India.

The point on the effect on our free trade partners is one missed by most observers. NAFTA decimated Mexican agriculture and that led to the immigration issues we now face. Furthermore, we have "liberalized" agriculture in the US. Avocados, for example, can only be imported as pulp, no whole fruit. That protects about 13,000 US farmers who are on paper all millionaires. Sugar and cotton are two other protected crops. People should more attention to the Farm Bill.

The other corollary argument advanced by Phyllis Schafly is that NAFTA will lead to a North American Union and an erosion of sovereignty.

You couldn't find a more recent study?

Do you really think the people in WI, OH, and PA will buy that NAFTA is good?

BTW....We also joined the WTO in 1995.

There are no mechanisms to ensure democracy in EVERY SINGLE international institution to which we belong that I am aware, and except for the UN, none of them deal in human rights either.  Furthermore, the UN puts countries like Libya or China on the human rights council.

Look, free trade is a ruse, everything like it is.  Money has no value except in people's belief that is has value.  Your average American worker, and rightly so, does not find it a boon that their job is outsourced for a third (if not lower) of their wage.

Money is not a living thing.  It is not a seed, you can't plant it and grow something.  It is not a cow, you can't milk it.  But the entire notion of free-trade is predicated on the idea that money, like the migrating birds, will somehow magically spread itself around if those who control it are just allowed to more freely invest/exploit/divide&conquer with it abroad.

I don't buy the studies done, the research on the effects, because you can't quantify some of the most damaging aspects of NAFTA -- the psychological ones.  What does it say to those manufacturing workers in the US that we think they are so unworthy of a job, of dignity, of their work translating into a secure base of citizenship?  It says "F*ck you, we don't care, profit is everthing."

Singer also said that in 2004 in Illinois, Obama spoke positively of the trade agreement, saying the United States had "benefited enormously" from exports under NAFTA.

"Correct."

No, NOT correct.

If you're a significant shareholder I'm sure none of this really matters, after all money is not geographical and the chapter 11 provisions are a Godsend to the real investor class.

But the salient facts are that NAFTA and like trade pacts have cost Americans good paying manufacturing jobs as well as weakened the nation by reducing its ability to make things.

To call NAFTA and similar agreements perfectly OK we would have to completely ignore the massive unhealthy balance of trade deficits that we're lugging around.  Much of this deficit is from loss of manufacturing base and has turned us into a debtor nation.

We are increasing our export of commodities and our only gains in manufacture export are in comparison to the very recent past and due to a very weak dollar.

We are, in short, behaving like a third world nation while eagerly destroying our own communities and in so doing tearing apart the nation's social fabric.

The Times' support of free trade is every bit as irrational, silly, ill informed and dishonest as the Washington Post's support for the invasion of Iraq.

In fact, the arguments they're now using sound all too much like the arguments used to sell NAFTA in the early 90s.

As Larry Speakes said; 'if you tell a lie six times it becomes fact.'