>May I make one more fruitless plea for somebody, somewhere to raise
>the level of the debate?
I doubt we have the same objections to this report, but I'm still struck by how it seems to rely on figuring the increase in the U.S. trade deficit since NAFTA took effect, dividing it by some average annual earnings figure, and assuming that equals the number of jobs lost. We've been through this before, but if trade increases growth, that increased growth could well more than offset the jobs lost to imports. That may or may not be true, but the EPI approach assumes that it's not true. I don't see how you can say that NAFTA killed 3/4 million jobs over a period when total U.S. employment grew by something like 20 million, nor do I see how you can argue that it depressed wages, when the last 5 years have seen real wage increases of the sort we haven't seen since before 1973. Also, the jobs created in Mexico leave a lot to be desired, for sure, but the number is still >0, so it'd seem the argument requires a bit more rigor and nuance.
Doug