MOSTLY FALSE: "NAFTA, supported by the Secretary (Clinton), cost us 800,000 jobs nationwide."

[riversedge]

ICYMI.


MOSTLY FALSE: "NAFTA, supported by the Secretary (Clinton), cost us 800,000 jobs nationwide."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/07/bernie-s/sanders-overshoots-nafta-job-losses/



Sanders overshoots on NAFTA job losses

By Jon Greenberg on Monday, March 7th, 2016 at 3:02 p.m.


In a series of notably sharper exchanges between Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Mich., had both candidates emphasizing their fundamental differences.

After Clinton laid out how she would boost industrial jobs in America, partly by going after companies that aim to shift production overseas, Sanders accused her of finding "religion on this issue, but it’s a little bit too late."

"Secretary Clinton supported virtually every one of the disastrous trade agreements written by corporate America," Sanders said. "NAFTA, supported by the secretary, cost us 800,000 jobs nationwide, tens of thousands of jobs in the Midwest.".....................



.........................

Our ruling

Sanders said that NAFTA, which Clinton used to support, cost the U.S. economy 800,000 jobs. There is a report from a left-leaning policy group that reached that conclusion. On the other hand, many other nonpartisan reports found that the trade deal produced neither significant job losses nor job gains. This is a result of competing economic models and the challenges of teasing out the effects of NAFTA from everything else that has taken place in the economy.

The report Sanders cited is an outlier, and his use of its findings ignores important facts that would give a different impression. We rate his statement Mostly False.




TWEET:
MOSTLY FALSE: "NAFTA, supported by the Secretary (Clinton), cost us 800,000 jobs nationwide." http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/07/bernie-s/sanders-overshoots-nafta-job-losses/ … #p2

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

1. How do they prove the source Sanders uses is not accurate...

[northernsouthern]

5. Yeah that bothered me too.

Polit seems to do good checking at times, but read this last month and where they said one study says it is correct, and then they just ignore it was a bit disappointing, they did not want to get called out for ignoring it I guess, but did not want to explain it either. Snopes has been a bit better at times. I wish there was a bit more of open pier review on it, but perhaps we can just ask them to explain it better.

[dogman]

2. So did the jobs gained pay as well as the jobs lost?

My ruling, Poliitifact rates as mostly false.

[Jitter65]

3. Try this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAFTA%27s_effect_on_United_States_employment

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2001/08/the-effects-of-nafta-on-exports-jobs

[HassleCat]

4. Politifact is mostly false

First they say it's not possible to determine whether or not NAFTA cost us jobs. Then they conclude it didn't cost us jobs. Politifact has been bending over backward to label Sanders untruthful, but they're only demonstrating they are not capable of applying any standards of truthfulness to themselves.

[northernsouthern]

6. Yeah that also bothered me.

I remember reading that is was difficult to know in the second study they quoted,what bugged me more was...

"The net employment effects were relatively small, although there were adjustments across sectors displacing workers," the report said.

In other words, jobs in certain industries, such as cars and electronics, might have suffered, but overall, the job impact was nominal.

The wording there is way too vague to be accidental. They list auto, which means it did hit auto, but then they said net jobs. That seems code for any job, regardless of pay or type, so perhaps shippers to mexico for the cars, sales people, logistics? I do not trust code words like that. I do thing Bernie simplified some of the effects, but I also hated when my economics teacher would pout mindless chatter about trade deals being good because they reduced cost, ignoring the fact we are basically paying other countries as little as we can to maximize our profit. Places like Nike that did that never lowered the cost of products, thus pocketing profits, but the ones that did lower cost basically let us become the sinners by buying shirts made from shops were people burned to death. Open trade seems to destroy our own ability to make sure things are done in a good safe and fare way and to prey on the life of others. So digressing there.