“It’s funny because out of all the rhetoric coming out of this year’s campaign this is the one issue thats going to have the most effect,” states Erica Grieder, former senior editor at Texas Monthly. “We’re going to have a lot of economic growth in Texas in the coming years because of trade. So if there’s a hostility in Texas to trade that’s not going to work out too well for us.”
Free trade came under attack this election cycle with all major party candidates making statements that blamed bad trade policies for the loss of manufacturing jobs and and the decline of the middle class. The top target of scrutiny has been the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a bipartisan deal that removed all trading barriers between the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
While President-elect Donald Trump has referred to NAFTA as the “worst trade deal” ever signed, economists have come to the general consensus that NAFTA has had an overall positive effect on the economy since its passage in 1993.
Regional trade has increased from roughly $290 billion in 1993 to more than $1.1 trillion in 2016. And while foreign direct investment stock in Mexico has increased from $15 billion to over a $100 billion in that same period, U.S. exports with partnering NAFTA countries have tripled since the legislation took effect and Canada and Mexico now account for one-third of U.S. exports according to the Congressional Research Service.
“There’s this kind of demagogue-ish concept that life is a zero-sum game. That the economy is primitive. That you take jobs from one country and move them to another country and there’s only a finite number of jobs to go around,” states Grieder. “Texas is proof that’s not the case.”
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