The seriousness of the possible end of the North American Free Trade Agreement cannot be overstated. It is far more consequential than the public and private fortunes of a Supreme Court nominee who should have been withdrawn weeks ago. The ratification of NAFTA in 1994 over the protests of virtually every labor union in the country changed the United States forever. It exacerbated the decline of industrial America and began the remaking of the rest of the world in the image of deracinated neoliberalism. Along with George W. Bush's awarding of "Most Favored Nation" status to China, it cemented seemingly for good the economic trends — the decrease in real wages, the end of lifetime employment, the decline of union power outside the public sector — that since the Carter administration had been transforming the United States from a mixed economy with quasi-nationalized industries and a strong welfare state to a libertarian-lite corporate dystopia.
President Trump's NAFTA-replacing deal with Canada and Mexico is very new. It is impossible in the space of only a day or two to review its proposed language, which runs to many thousands of words on every conceivable subject on which the interests of two or more of the member countries might intersect.
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