Content area
Full Text
One of the defining moments of the 1992 presidential campaign came when Reform Party candidate H. Ross Perot gave his views on the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement.
"You can move your factory south of the border, pay a dollar an hour ... and you don't care about anything but making money There will be a giant sucking sound going south," Perot famously said of the agreement, which opened Mexico's and Canada's borders to free trade with the United States.
Almost 12 years have passed since Perot's comment and 10 years since NAFTA took effect. And. while many international trade experts say NAFTA has not been the bust opponents predicted, neither has it been the boom proponents touted.
"NAFTA was way oversold by the people who wanted it and way overthreatened by those who didn't," says Steven Livingston, professor of political science and economics at Middle Tennessee State University.
Livingston, who writes extensively about free trade agreements, says the percentage of jobs lost to Mexico as a result of NAFTA is minimal.
"Certain...