During the second presidential debate of 1992, business magnate and independent candidate Ross Perot warned we’d hear a “giant sucking sound” of American jobs leaving the country if the U.S. enacted the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. Perot was largely dismissed at the time, perhaps because he himself was so eminently dismissible, but you can draw a straight line from NAFTA to the election of Donald Trump 24 years later.
Championed by Ronald Reagan and ultimately enacted by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the pact has hollowed out the manufacturing industry, leaving millions of Americans destitute and resentful.