70,000 Alabama jobs said at risk if NAFTA talks crash

[yallerdawg]

Source: AL.com, by Lee Roop

President Trump has threatened to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) now up for renewal, but north Alabama business leaders were warned Thursday that he may also tear up 70,000 Alabama jobs if he does.

Jobs. They are why Alabama citizens should care about the negotiations under way to renew the deal among the U.S., Canada and Mexico originally signed 24 years ago, the business leaders were told. When the deal was made to cut or end duties on most products and parts moving between the three countries, all three wanted it.

"Now, we have two countries that really want it and another one that's saying they probably don't want it," Mexican Consul General F. Javier Diaz told reporters afterward. "That's a very different thing."

*****

"A lot of people think that what we are trading with each other is finished goods," Diaz said. "Yes, we sell avocados and you sell bourbon. That's great."

But the real relationship is more complex, he said. "For example, every car that is done in North America, the cars are actually (made) partly in Mexico and partly in the United States. Out of every Mexican product that is exported to the world, 40 percent of that product is American content. If you compare that to China, the percentage of American content in a Chinese product is 2 percent."

*****

Read it all at: http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2018/02/70000_alabama_jobs_said_at_ris.html

[tblue37]

1. K&R for visibility. nt

[Squinch]

2. Gosh. Maybe they should have thought of that before they voted for him.

[Cicada]

3. American jobs massively increased after NAFTA but Gephardt had a reason to be angry about it

Gephardt exploded when he found out NAFTA failed to include this provision: that the Mexican minimum wage would rise in proportion to per capita gdp. Gephardt wisely knew that Mexico would pocket the profits without sharing with the workers, continuing a disadvantage for US workers. The treaty was good for us but it could have been much better. But our trade representative Mickey Kantor told Gephardt that he simply could not get Mexico to agree to that provision.

But people here or elsewhere yelled at me when I defended NAFTA. I bought it, read it, and it just lowered tariffs. Mostly the tariffs Mexico imposed on us. They had average tariffs on our stuff of 15% we had 5% on their stuff. Moving them toward zero helped level the playing field which was tilted against us.

Almost all economists, left right and center think free trade deals help our workers and our economy.

Would Brad De Long do us wrong? Would Paul Krugman? Hell no.

TPP would have been good for us (you may now attack me). The trade part was peanuts, trivial, rounding error. But it would bring southeast asian nations into our team politically. Now that we will not be part of it those nations will align with China instead.

[yallerdawg]

4. I have a roto-signed letter from President Obama...

hanging on my wall thanking me for supporting his TPP position and advocacy.

You'll get no "attack" from me!

[Cicada]

5. Am I in the twilight zone?

I skimmed some of your posts and it was kind of scary how your mind seems to be stalking mine or vice versa. Clever Man? Leftovers? Odd.

[yallerdawg]

6. I have a very specific taste in shows (I do monthly "reviews" of programming at "TV Chat (Group)."

Since they make it to TV and usually get one season renewal, I just KNEW there had to be more like me somewhere out there!