Sunday, February 15

Speaking of jobs, awhile ago the Economist pointed out that NAFTA wasn't actually meant to create jobs:
So far as its economic effects are concerned, the right question to ask of NAFTA is simply whether it indeed succeeded in stimulating trade and investment. The answer is clear: it did (see charts). In 1990 the United States' exports to, and imports from, Canada and Mexico accounted for about a quarter of its trade; now they account for about a third. That is a dramatic switch, especially when one notes that the United States' non-NAFTA trade has itself grown strongly over the period. There is plenty of economic evidence to suggest that expanded trade, as a rule, raises incomes and future rates of growth. So it is pretty clear that NAFTA achieved as much as one could sensibly have expected it to achieve.
Well, you can't see the charts unless you have a subscription.

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