Dennis Kucinich: “the news from the latest assessment of NAFTA's effects is bad. They reported bad news for northern Ohio, where I…”

“the news from the latest assessment of NAFTA's effects is bad. They reported bad news for northern Ohio, where I represent the west side of the city of Cleveland and the surrounding suburbs. The story there is repeated around the country's auto-dependent regions. The latest report reveals that United States exports to Mexico are inconsequential. Mexico is not the consumer market the NAFTA cheerleaders promised that it would be. Mexico has been increasingly an export platform for vehicles sold in the United States. United States auto imports from Mexico are more than 10 times the value of United States exports to Mexico. The United States auto trade deficit has grown since NAFTA by about 400 percent, $14.6 billion from $3.6 billion. The report is silent about jobs lost to Mexico. The report's authors claim that they can only estimate the number of jobs gained in the United States through exports but they cannot estimate the number of jobs lost due to increased imports. Well, that defies common sense. The Department of Labor's own figures of jobs lost due to NAFTA estimate over 120,000 jobs lost. Respectable academic estimates of jobs lost due to NAFTA put the number of jobs lost at about 420,000. The report can estimate only 90,000 to 160,000 jobs supported by NAFTA-associated exports to Mexico. What the assessment did not say is how NAFTA has affected the American worker and the American way of life.”