Two decades ago, the strongest critics of the North American Free Trade Agreement were members of labor unions. They warned that the trade deal would mean the loss of manufacturing jobs to Mexico and lower wages for U.S. workers.
Today, 20 years since NAFTA's passage, unions feel as strongly as ever that the deal was a bad idea.
Back in 1993, the labor movement was mobilized against the creation of a massive free-trade zone including the U.S., Canada and Mexico. There were union-backed protests around the U.S. — at the Capitol in Washington and especially in the industrial Midwest and in big manufacturing states.
That fall in Lansing, Mich., Ruben Burks of the United Auto Workers addressed a big crowd. "Do we care about our jobs?" he said to cheers. "Do we care about our brothers and sisters in Mexico and Canada? Brothers and sisters, we're going to stop this NAFTA — you're darn right we are."
Except they didn't. President Clinton was in his first year in the White House, having been elected with help from traditional Democrats — including union members. But he disagreed with labor on NAFTA.
Unions predicted disaster for U.S. workers: a flood of high-wage American factory jobs moving to Mexico. In a radio address that fall, Clinton spoke to that worry.
"Well, if we don't pass NAFTA, that could still be true. The lower wages and the lower cost of production will still be there," he said. "But if we do pass it, it means dramatically increased sales of American products made right here in America."
So during the NAFTA debate, labor unions squared off against a Democratic president. That wasn't necessarily a rare thing, but Harley Shaiken, a labor analyst at the University of California, Berkeley, notes that the reach of the controversy made it unusual.
"Trade debates from World War II up to NAFTA tended to be rather sedate. Important issues, but left to the experts," Shaiken says. But NAFTA, he says, "put the debate onto Main Street, into union halls, into community groups as well as into Congress."
And since NAFTA, trade has regularly been a contentious topic, prompting debate and protests. "Globalization" has become a term both praised and scorned.
More NPR Coverage On NAFTA
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