been around and said, why won't everybody go south? i finally got them up for 12 to 15 years and said, how does it stop in disruptive? when their jobs come up to six dollars an hour and hours go down to six dollars an hour, then it is level again. but in the meantime, you have wrecked the country with these kinds of deals. in the meantime -- host: clinton and democrats were for this program. perot was not. he ended up winning quite a large chunk in the general election. how did that impact, as a third-party candidate and independent, how did him railing against nafta impact that outcome? guest: he won almost 19% of the votes, the highest share since teddy roosevelt.

it allowed bill clinton position himself in the middle position. he was for nafta but was going to work out separate side agreements protecting labor and environmental regulation. the critics, the whole point of nafta was to exploit cheap labor and get away from those environmental controls. i think perot, he was widely seen or sometimes mocked by both parties. again, there was an emphasis on elite knowledge. gore had a debate with ross perot on cnn, on the larry king show as part of the selling of nafta. gore trotted out every nobel prize person supported it. and the expertise that was supporting it. whereas perot was a plain folk person who represented the

opposition to that elite sort of consensus. i think there was a very important speech in the house over the debate. david as i mentioned earlier, he really crystallized the rejection of this elite expertise. and to a lot of people, it was plain as day. and a lot of their fears proved to be correct impressions. and at the time, perot was sort of mocked for raising these issues. and also his style and so on. but in the end, both parties, i think it is empirically true that it has changed the country. the more widely shared working-class prosperity that existed, nafta helped unravel that. you have tremendous income

inequality now and nafta was part of that trend. i think perot now is viewed very differently. and i think both parties have reoriented themselves away from these free-trade deals. the republican side rhetorical -- president biden has kept a lot of trumps tariffs and they have negotiated no new trade deals. that is the first time in 30 years since nafta that no new trade deals have been passed under an administration. catherine is advocating a workers centered trade policy, trying to move away from the paradigm. there were improvements from mexican workers in the usmca and

what perot said was quite interesting in that the idea was to disincentive eyes the movement of these jobs by allowing -- mexico really didn't have and still doesn't really have independent trade unions. they are very management friendly. without that, you know, they can keep wages down. now, there is penalties and so on for disrupting union organizing and katherine tai has imposed fines on some of these countries. i think you have not seen its ability to stop the outflow of jobs. this is the nafta 2.0 as it is sometimes called, the usmca. host: let's hear from kurt in pennsylvania on the line for independents. caller: good morning, tammy and dan. guest: hi.

caller: you've talked very little about the usmca and the fact that trump was the only president to renegotiate this destructive nafta as you deemed it to be. bill clinton, one of the most destructive things he did was allow china into the wto. that was the beginning of the destruction of america, i think more so than nafta. how about the usmca, how about giving trump a little credit? he was the only president to renegotiate and try to dampen the destructive impact of nafta. guest: it's a good question. when you look at the agreement, there was an effort to talk a little bit about it. he's a subject in one of my articles about nafta in 2020 in the new yorker. i do think that it was not significant, a lot of the people that i spoke to pointed out that it was drafted and influenced by

corporate lobbyists. you are still seeing this outflow of jobs. as i mentioned, the stellantis plants moved production of the jeep to mexico. i think in a lot of ways, it was very minor, the changes that it was able to do. and a lot of those changes, to be fair, were negotiated by -- at the us it -- insistence of organized labor. in order for them to agree to it, they made improvements in terms of organizing and so on. i think it is not all that different. that's why critics dubbed it nafta 2.0.

rhetorically it was effective for trump and politically. but the substance of it, i don't think it achieved a significant difference. host: tom in ohio on the line for republicans. caller: thank you. i worked in a factory in a small town area in ohio. nafta pretty well shut it down. they moved it to mexico. the head ceo was larry. we will create 1000 jobs. he forgot to say we will be in mexico. it just about destroyed this town. then bill clinton went on to do other things. he tried to change the name of the white house. that wouldn't have been a good name, neither. thank you. guest: i'm aware of the spark

plug factory. john macarthur has published an article about that particular -- or it was a video about that particular plant. it was quite sad for the residents there. a real sense of the trail, i think. -- betrayal, i think. host: you have an article in the new yorker that came out almost four years ago. the headline, will trumps broken promises to the working-class cost him the election? when we talk about the political impact of nafta, the rust belt was an area that former president obama won and then trump won and biden won in 2020, some key states there. what do you see happening in

2024? guest: it's a central issue. i don't know the outcome. it's important to note that biden voted for nafta and the agreement to allow china, granting it permanent normal trade relations. he has changed since then, especially as president, reorienting it away from those kinds of deals and trying to focus on, you know, heavy investments, government investments and manufacturing and so on, electric vehicles and so on through the ira and other legislation gets passed. i don't know. it's a fifty-year story and the impact, the pain, the effects are really deep and profound. i really don't know the outcome. i think that trump you know saw in 2016 a political opening and

there is a change in the republican party around these issues. i don't know how deep or meaningful it is. again, they have widely proclaimed themselves pro work or prolabor. but they have proposed legislation like this proactive at would make it easier to unionize and so on. i don't know where it will lead. it seems like there is still a drift where the democratic party is appealing to more professional -- there is a famous quote in the recent new york times magazine article where chuck schumer says we can lose -- i'm paraphrasing off the top of my head -- but for every blue-collar worker we lose in western pennsylvania, we pick up two moderate suburbanites. in philadelphia or wherever and you can repeat that in ohio, wisconsin and so on.

i think that really crystallized their thinking at that time. that was in the lead up to the 2015 elections. i think trump victories -- trump's victory and bernie sanders campaign has caused a reorientation on the democratic side and whether or not it will continue to the same degree under kamala harris and her campaign, she seems to be partially focused on this issue. she launched her campaign a few days after she announced she was at a uaw hall. she was also celebrating republican endorsements like liz cheney. so, there is a little bit of a disconnect between those two sides. trump and vance both mentioned nafta in their are in c -- rnc

speeches. it is a salient issue. this pain doesn't go anywhere. there is a wonderful phrase by a woman named sherry lincoln. she's a professor in working-class studies and talks about the half-life of the industrialization. it doesn't go away, these jobs were so coveted and so important to the stability and sense of community, across -- particularly across the rust belt. new jersey used to have many manufacturing jobs. host: james in rome, georgia. caller: let me go back to the truth of what happened. -- that's when all these people started coming in the 1980's when reagan was in office.

all these people, ms-13, open borders during ronald reagan and the republican administration. i live here, i've seen it. it was already gone before nafta. when we busted the unions, it was ronald reagan and the republicans. why won't you bring up the disaster when he ran up the rent? those people, when they came on here, millions and millions of them. they were competing with the workers who were already over here. they brought in slave labor from mexico and central america. that is what's the killer. it was because nobody could compete so they could fire workers and they had seniority and years on them. they shutdown those factories. it was way before nafta. host: james, we will get a

response. guest: thank you for your call. it did begin before nafta. i think ronald reagan was such an important figure in destroying the labor movement. those of us who were alive then remember the breaking of the air traffic controllers union when he fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers for going on strike. ironically, the union had endorsed him for the 1980 campaign. i agree that all of these forces were in motion before nafta. so, you know, it is part of a long story. both parties ultimately were responsible but i think nafta had a significant effect on changing the economy and politics of our country. certainly it was created, the idea was created by republicans. it is rooted in the libertarian

philosophy of milton friedman and so on. and it was adopted by bill clinton and passed, signed into law under him. i don't discount the effect of all the deindustrialization that happened before. host: mark in massachusetts on the line for independents, good morning. >> good morning. thank you. first of all, i have two points. how about the jobs that have come back recently, since covid and a lot of on shoring? also, how about -- i worked for a company in the sewing industry. and they basically went bankrupt, thought they could offshore and then came back because they realized doing business in china isn't that easy. you need to invest. my final point is how about american consumers and how we

have benefited from all of these trade negotiations? i think a pan-american between north america and south america would benefit all of our region given the current term world and everything with venezuela's oil and everything else. thank you. guest: yeah, i think there has been a significant reassuring. particularly under biden and the investments. the ira has really into the rise -- incentivized bringing production back. i think it is a really important factor on whether it is just jobs or really good jobs, there was a plan in lordstown, ohio. which a large jam plant had closed there in 2019 under trump. it was the last really big

industrial manufacturer that had 50,000 well-paying steel jobs. that closed in 2019. in its place, there has been a battery plant that has been started and it was unionized and wages went up. there has been a significant shift. i do think that as far as the consumer prices go, that has been a benefit. as i mentioned, there is a study from the economic policy institute that did control for that and found that on average, americans without a college degree lose about $2000 a year from trade with low-wage countries. controlling for the lower cost of consumer goods. in other words, i don't think it is a net benefit for most people. however, a segment of society has grown a lot wealthier because of these agreements.

but it is a win-win within the country if you know what i mean. host: we have time for one more call, ron in pennsylvania on the line for democrats. caller: i agree with the call from -- caller from georgia. johnstown is still suffering from reaganomics. 12,000 or 14,000 workers gone. he let steel be dumped on this country and that's what happened. that was before nafta. that was in the 1980's. we have had also the population loss here, it's unbelievable. we went from 63,000 people to 18,000. the county went from 212,000 to 133,000. those are lost jobs that will probably never come back.

we have a mill that is about 12 miles long, sitting empty, practically. there are some small companies there it will never be the same as what it used to be. i definitely think reaganomics was as disastrous as nafta was. guest: i agree with you. as i mentioned, milwaukee for example, within four years from 1979 to 1983, lost a quarter of its manufacturing jobs. i know the steel industry, in youngstown, there is a day that people called black monday, in 1977 when the first layoffs happened. it was announced in youngstown and they laid off 5000 people without warning. people still remember where they were like jfk's assassination, when they heard that news. it sort of ushered in a long and painful deindustrialization.

and reagan's policy, the laissez-faire style accelerated it for sure. trying to tame inflation by jacking up interest rates 20% as paul walker did, who was appointed by carter, caused a massive wave of factory closings across the midwest. host: you spoke with about 40 people in wisconsin about the impact of nafta. what did they have to say about the upcoming election, in terms of who they were supporting or not supporting, sitting it out and not voting? guest: there was a variety. i did speak to a lot of the workers. a lot of them are very supportive of the typical party. they do have one of the main

protagonists who has very mixed feelings about bill clinton. some of them though are very disaffected and aren't voting at all. they feel betrayed by both parties. i think you have seen some of that reflected in diminishing -- i'm not sure. diminishing turnout in certain communities, anyway. but it is all over the map. there are people who have switched over to trump. i do think there is a sense of decoupling of party allegiance. that organized labor used to be very strongly tied to the democratic party. particularly because of franklin roosevelt and the signing of the national labor relations act and so on. but over time it has eroded. culture forces do play a role, partly because the economic union became weaker and they were not able to protect these jobs.

there was backlash against that as well. but i think, you know, like anything, it is all over the map. there is not one clear answer. people that tend to be tied to the uaw still tend to be more democratic. but as most people probably know, the teamsters have declined to endorse, despite president biden saving their pension plan and so on. there has been a decoupling in particular because of trump's advanced rhetoric around being pro-worker. that has perhaps played a role and their emphasis on, you know, mitt romney for example, the previous republican nominee was ceo of bank capital. which was responsible for some

of these closings across the midwest. president obama ran against him partly on that record of industrialization. he had some tough ads around that and went to nafta to celebrate this re-shoring that was very modest at that time. and he also centered his campaign around saving the auto industry in the wake of the financial crisis. i think it shows the importance of these issues and the main issue of having a good job is so central. and i think whoever is able to better convince working-class voters that they are the person that will deliver it will, you know, have an advantage. host: are guest, dan kaufman is the author of the article how nafta broke american politics. you can find it in a new york times magazine at new york times.com/magazine.

dan, thank you so much for being with us. guest: thank you. it was a real pleasure. host: still ahead on washington journal, washington post technology policy reporter cat zakrzewski will discuss the use of artificial intelligence in 2024. but first, open form. -- forum. you can call in. here are the lines. (202) 748-8001. that is for republicans. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. we will be right back. ♪ >> attention, middle and high school students across america. it's time to make your voice heard. c-span's studentcam documentary contest 2025 is here. this is your chance to create a documentary that can inspire change, raise awareness and make an impact.

your documentary should answer this years question. your message to the president, what issue is most important to you for your community? whether you are passionate about politics, the environment or community stories, studentcam is your chance to share your platform with the world. including a grand prize of $5,000. this is your opportunity not only to make an impact would be rewarded for your creativity and hard work. into your submi today. scan the code are used studentcam.com all the details on how to enter. the deadline is january 20, 2025. >> american history tv, exploring the people and events that told the american story. fort ticonderoga in new york hosted its 20th annual discussion on the american revolution. highlights included robert

swanson, david june on the saratoga campaign, 1777. and kieran o'keefe on why -- went from a beautiful subject of the criminal -- british crowd to a criminal. exploring what made these elections historic and the lasting impact on the nation. this is the election of 1960. john kennedy narrowly defeated incumbent republican vice president richard nixon. boston college communications professor on how baseball connects americans to their past and culture. exploring american stories, watch american history tv and guide. schedule on your program or watch online any time at c-span.org/history.

>> washington journal continues. host: welcome back. we are in open forum for the next 20 minutes. we will star in sue -- with sue in michigan on the line for republicans. good morning. caller: good morning. i would like to suggest that the natural successor to the last segment that you just divided on nafta is the danger that we face as american citizens, native americans is that the world economic forum, all of those huge greeting corporations and other nationalities, they are all pushing for overriding any autonomy we have in the united states of america and all of our tax dollars have been looted.

if you are voting republican, that's a good thing because donald trump is a nationalist. i hope he's not owned. we will find out. we need to close our borders. we need to provide for american infrastructure and we need to take care of our own people, regardless of their race, their religion or their politics. it's time to take care of america, folks. get real. to say nothing of wars getting created with our money overseas to which we have no control. our congress doesn't provide them the time to take a look anymore. we have been looted. take a good look. host: mike in illinois on the independent line. good morning, mike.

caller: good morning. two things. the stellantis plant you talked about, bernie sanders came up here last week, thank you bernie sanders, and put a little life on that factory, showing that they bought back stock of $8 billion this year. and now it's closed. the thing about stellantis is they are going under taxes and they are claiming themselves to be big three. victory is gone. big three is gone. it is just ford and chevy. chrysler has been bought out. elon musk, please look -- there is a plant right next to it. rockford is in the center of a triangle.

rockford is right in the middle. if you want to come to rockford for a four day weekend and visit all three of these cities, it's the perfect spot for a day trip. second of all, stockholm syndrome is leaching into the republican and democratic party. i think they fell in love with their captains. after watching the fbi see get bankrupt, after watching colleges with fake demonstrations. after the covid, and flooding our countries with illegals, stockholm syndrome is live in b. the supreme court, not to bring up anything on harris walking her way into this, these two candidates being shoved down our throats, american knows it.