U.S. trade surplus with Mexico of $2.5 billion and the $29.6 billion deficit with Canada in the year before NAFTA went into effect have morphed into a combined NAFTA trade deficit of $177 billion. The optimistic promises of job creating in the United States made at the time of the NAFTA votes were predicated on NAFTA improving the U.S. balance of trade. The reality has been the opposite.

 

In 1993, Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) projected that NAFTA would lead to a rising U.S. trade surplus with Mexico, which would create 170,000 net new jobs per year in the United States. This figure was trumpeted by the Clinton administration and other NAFTA proponents.

 

Hufbauer and Schott based their projection on the observat...

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