Opinion: By blaming Clinton for NAFTA negative impacts Trump won in 2016

In his recent Asheville Citizen Times column, “America must shake isolationist thinking,” Rev. Robert L. Montgomery gave excellent examples of our nation’s beneficial role in promoting international trade and security.

He accurately criticized the former President Trump and the MAGA movement’s “America First” isolationist thinking and actions. American security has relied on alliances and security commitments we made with other countries in the past.

But that’s only half of the story. There are examples of international trade agreements that resulted in great harm to our economy and political environment. When members of special interest groups represent the negotiating nations’ demands, instead of individuals who want what is best for their total nation, very bad things happen.

The best example may be when President Bill Clinton submitted the North American Free Trade Agreement to Congress for ratification in 1993. He decided that he needed to compromise with congressional Republicans if he were to get their later cooperation, and it would enhance his chances to win a future election.

NAFTA was actually Republication legislation. President George H.W. Bush was the one who signed the NAFTA agreement with President Carlos Salinas of Mexico and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada. Bush didn’t submit the agreement to Congress for ratification because it was too late in the year, and possibly because it had a strong negative voter approval.

In a 1992 debate, presidential candidate H. Ross Perot correctly argued that “there will be a giant sucking sound going south” if NAFTA was ratified, and that’s exactly what happened.

Clinton did a lot of good things for our country, but making working Americans compete with people making one-tenth as much wasn't one of them. Keeping wages stagnant by controlling the labor market has been the go-to strategy of investors throughout history, and expanding the labor supply to include other nations is corporate America's ultimate cure for rising wages.

Of course, in his favor, Clinton also raised taxes on the top 1.2% of Americans. Higher tax revenues — coupled with rising corporate profits and the skyrocketing stock market — eventually reduced the deficit to a net surplus. However, it was done on the backs of those who lost their jobs or saw their wages stagnate, while globalization's real winners became millionaires.

The result of that election was that it created Trump and the MAGA movement’s “America First” isolationist thinking and actions. It also caused the devastating loss of negotiating power of labor unions and fewer wage increases for workers.

So, by blaming Clinton and Democrats for NAFTA, Trump not only got the support of investors and the wealthy because he would cut their taxes, he got the support of workers, the middle class and poor because, almost overnight, NAFTA had devastating effects on them.

Only two presidential candidates were willing to publicly and loudly proclaim this obvious truth: Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Trump, because he was opposing First Lady Hillary Clinton, and Sanders because of NAFTA’s effect on working class wages.

In a debate with Trump, Hillary Clinton admitted there were problems with NAFTA, but it just needed a few revisions. That didn’t go over very well with workers.

The success of former President Trump is a clear warning of what can happen again. Trump got voter support in 2016 because he successfully blamed President Clinton and the Democratic Party for NAFTA.

Demagogues can gain the support of voters because they accurately describe the failures of government to meet obvious needs. Large, complex and aging nations always have unsolved problems, and a talented demagogue can blame the wrong causes and come up with the wrong solutions. Those causes are usually people who are not like the followers of the demagogue, and existing institutions are easily scapegoated: the press, the FBI, the IRS and so on.

Trump can easily claim that he would solve the nation’s problems quickly, cheaply and painlessly — just as he supposedly did as a businessman. He promised he would cut everyone’s taxes, which would put more money into the hands of consumers who would spend it better than government bureaucrats — although government is always in need of funds for infrastructure, education, health care research and so on.

Unfortunately, a demagogue like Trump can be more appealing to voters than a leader who is committed to telling the hard truth about what must be done for the nation at large.

More: Opinion: Trump became president by successfully blaming Democrats for NAFTA

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Fairview’s Chuck Kelly is author of Why capitalism thrives—and how it self-destructs. He can be reached at kellycm2@bellsouth.net.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Opinion: Trump gained support by blaming Democratic Party for NAFTA