Free The Betrayal of the American Dream by Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele Page A

tariffs. By the time he left office, the number was down to 728,000. In 2011, only an estimated 120,000 workers were left, according to the Labor Department.
    NAFTA was negotiated under President George H. W. Bush, who pledged that the agreement would permit the United States to sell to Mexico “even more of the goods we’re best at producing: computers, manufacturing equipment, high-tech and high-value products.” But NAFTA was sold to Congress and the nation by Bill Clinton. “I believe that NAFTA will create a million jobs in the first five years of its impact,” Clinton proclaimed on September 14, 1993. “NAFTA will generate these jobs by creating an export boom to Mexico.” Clinton could not count any better than his predecessors.
    During the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled in four cases that Chinese steel imports were unfairly harming U.S. businesses and workers and recommended that the president impose tariffs on Chinese goods. But in every case Bush declined to do so: “I find that the import relief would have an adverse impact on the United States economy clearly greater than the benefits of such action,” Bush wrote in denying relief.
    President Obama has given tentative approval for a plan to open U.S. highways to commercial trucks from Mexico, fulfilling one of NAFTA’s promises. Every president since the first George Bush has supported the idea of allowing trucks from Mexico to deliver goods to the United States, a policy that would throw thousands of U.S. truckers out of business.
    Who says that bipartisanship is dead in Washington? It’s worked to perfection in trade policy—with devastating consequences for working Americans. Despite all the bluster out of Washington demanding fair trade policies by our trading partners, the United States hasn’t had the political will to back up the rhetoric. To do that in all likelihood would require administering a dose of what the ardent free-traders call protectionism. Our trading partners know that’s not going to happen. The pressure from powerful multinational corporations and the uproar from some economists and media personalities would make any move to establish trade restrictions—even temporarily—next to impossible.
    So the charade goes on. While Washington mouths platitudes and gives lip service to trade reform in a never-ending cycle, the trade deficit soars. Thanks to both parties, the cumulative trade deficits since 1976 add up to a staggering $10 trillion. That’s “trillion” with a T, an ocean of red ink that translates into millions of lost jobs. But you never hear about that. The politicians and the news media only talk about jobs created by exports. They never mention the jobs eliminated by imports.

    OUR GREATEST EXPORT
    On any given day, the huge gantry cranes at the port of Long Beach in California are busy hoisting bulk containers onto the decks of freighters bound for China. Inside these twenty-ton boxes the size of railcars are America’s exports.
    Politicians and economists have long hailed exports as America’s economic future. Export jobs pay more than other jobs, they say. Exports help reduce the nation’s trade deficit. And exports are a sign that America is competitive in the global economy.
    So what’s in those colorful containers stacked several stories high on the decks of these gigantic ships bound for China?
    Scrap paper.
    More containers leave U.S. ports loaded with old cardboard boxes, shredded documents, paper bags, and other paper scraps than any other product. “The U.S. has become to waste-paper what Saudi Arabia is to oil,” the Journal of Commerce says. In 2010 an estimated 20 million tons of waste paper was shipped from U.S. ports. That filled a lot of containers, but it isn’t worth much as an export. The total value of scrap-paper exports has recently been as high as $3 billion a year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau—less than 1 percent of the value of