Campaigning for the presidency, Donald Trump made the North America Free Trade Agreement the centerpiece of his attack on globalization. NAFTA, he said, was “the single worst deal ever approved.” Dismantling it quickly became key to his plan to Make America Great Again.
To be fair, Trump was far from the first to condemn the deal, which has long been used as a scapegoat for all that is wrong with the U.S. economy. For instance, during the 2008 presidential campaign, the agreement was regularly assailed by the two major Democratic Party aspirants. Barack Obama claimed it helped businesses at the expense of American workers, and hence was responsible for jacking up unemployment. Hillary Clinton foreswore any new multilateral trade agreements and vowed that she would toughen what she said was insufficiently pro-American enforcement of NAFTA.
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