A study tracks how the North American Free Trade Agreement and trade competition with Mexico led to earlier deaths for American factory workers.
Excerpt - Centrist Democrats and Republicans supported the agreement as a way to strengthen the North American economy. But its legacy has been mixed. In some parts of the United States, the agreement shuttered factories and put people out of work as companies moved production to Mexico, where labor was cheaper. President Trump won over unions and other workers as a candidate by labeling NAFTA the “worst agreement ever” and promising to improve or scrap it. The changes, he said, were large enough to outweigh prior estimates about NAFTA’s nationwide benefits, including cheaper goods for consumers. U.S. factory work probably would have declined even without NAFTA, just not as rapidly, Mr. Notowidigdo said. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 was a significant source of competition. And trends in automation, technology and offshoring have meant that most rich nations — and even some poorer ones — are seeing rates of manufacturing employment decline. “What NAFTA did is it accelerated it,” Mr. Notowidigdo said. He pointed to other countries, like Denmark <https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d35e72fcff15f0001b48fc2/t/68670fa6360a4307e7018761/1751584679761/humlum-et-al-2025-changing-tracks-human-capital-investment-after-loss-of-ability.pdf>, that had set up systems to help support and retrain workers who had lost their jobs. But in certain parts of the United States where factories moved overseas, the negative effects of NAFTA were concentrated. Because manufacturing jobs were more unionized and tended to be highly paid, especially for men with less education, workers who lost their factory jobs tended to end up in much worse situations. Previous academic research found that factory closures led to earlier deaths among local workers, whether from disease, drug overdose or other causes. The economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have shown <https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190785/deaths-of-despair-and-the-future-of-capitalism?srsltid=AfmBOopUCwAuzX8tVJtQ7k3sS8ew1hmp_ZyINBVnxEaU48DMskkAb2Ns> that the decline of manufacturing was connected with higher rates of opioid addiction and “deaths of despair” from alcohol, drugs and suicide. Other research has shown that areas more exposed to NAFTA saw declines in wages and employment, and a shift in political support away from the Democratic Party toward Republicans and Mr. Trump. full article - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/us/politics/a-lot-of-life-years-lost-how-nafta-shortened-american-life-spans.html -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#41119): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/41119 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/118329924/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
