The economic impact of the 1994 free trade deal with Mexico chopped a year off many Americans’ lives, according to a report in the New York Times.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) boosted Wall Street by sending millions of U.S. jobs to lower-wage workers in Mexico. The civic cost is described in a new study titled ‘Trading Goods for Lives: NAFTA’s Mortality Impacts and Implications.”
“In the first 15 years of NAFTA, about 3 percent of 45-year-old men lost a year of their remaining life expectancy as a result of the trade deal,” hte newspaper reported, adding:
The researchers saw increases in mortality across most major causes of death, including illness, drug overdoses and suicides. The overall trends particularly affected working-age men, and were more pronounced in the Southeast and parts of the Midwest, like Michigan.
Matthew Notowidigdo, one of the report’s authors, said in an interview that the work highlighted an “underappreciated cost of globalization.” In the cities and towns facing new competition from Mexican factories, “life expectancy falls, and it hits really hard on men,” he said.
“We’re talking about a lot of life years lost,” he added.
The study concluded:
In the 15 years post-NAFTA, an area with average NAFTA exposure experienced an increase in annual, age-adjusted mortality of 0.68 percent … an increase that more than erases prior estimates of the welfare gains from NAFTA’s nationwide economic benefits. Mortality increases appear across all broad age by sex groups, but are particularly pronounced among working-age men, a demographic that also experienced disproportionate NAFTA-induced declines in (primarily manufacturing) employment
President Donald Trump renegotiated the three-nation NAFTA deal in 2018 to help Americans. This year, he is expected to review the replacement treaty, dubbed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), with Mexico and Canada.
Hellbound and Down 