There was offshoring of jobs before, but nafta put it on steroids. I've seen some statistics where it did better for the country, and statistics where it did worse. In my own experience, people who lost their jobs to nafta got lesser paid jobs and cut back on expenses, or got two jobs to make up for the loss. I heard Nafta would be bad for Mexican farms and it was, since USA flooded Mexico with it's subsidized agriculture products. It created a mass exodus to the big cities of Mexico and to the USA. Anybody ever see a company go to Mexico or China and then see the product that company produces have a big price drop? Just asking. Ford's building a plant in Mexico. Let's see if those cars come with a much cheaper price. Right.
Red:
Addressed already. The figures below come from here:
The Effects of NAFTA and United States Farm Policies on Illegal Immigration and Agricultural Trade
Take a look at that; that is astounding!
Net immigration boost of some 1700 people doesn't strike me as anything we in the U.S. can rightly call a "mass exodus."
Blue (relative price):
I have to ask, do you want to have a discussion of the impact of free trade on prices, relative prices, which derives from comparative advantage? Or do you want to discuss the price of specific products, price level or nominal price, which is a function of things other than free trade -- monetary factors/policy (inflation is but one), marketing decisions, and microeconomic choices? I cannot tell which because you are in your paragraph above conflating disparate concepts.
Let's begin the some basic and relevant economic definitions for this discussion. These aren't a matter of whether I think the terms should or should not be be defined as show. It is how economists define them and use them accordingly. Period.
Types of Prices -- Definitions (
copy paste from what amounts to being a standard economics textbook provided solely for convenience)
Nominal and Real Prices
- The "nominal price" of a good is its value in terms of money, such as dollars, French francs, or yen.
- The "relative" or "real price" is its value in terms of some other good, service, or bundle of goods.
The term "relative price" is used to make comparisons of different goods at the same moment of time. The term "real price" tends to be used to make comparisons of one good to a group or bundle of other goods across
different time periods, such as one year to the next. For example:
- Nominal price:
- That CD costs $18.
- Japan's science and technology spending costs its taxpayers about 3 trillion yen per year.
- Relative price:
- A year of college costs about the value of a Toyota Camry.
- Those tickets to see Lady Gaga cost me three weeks' worth of food.
- Real price:
- The real price of coffee rose in the last year, so to buy a pound of coffee I now have to skip a day of croissants or buy fewer songs on iTunes.
- My cost of living rose 2% last year in real terms.
Looking at the definitions above, one sees that economics has terms for and distinguishes among the various nature of prices. Common sense tells one that a layperson, someone not schooled in economics, most likely will not. Rather such individuals will focus their thoughts in terms of the prices they pay at the checkout counter or the wage they earn at work. That lay folks when considering free trade don't often think of prices in terms of relative prices, that they don't consider wages as just another price -- "wage" is just a term for the price of labor -- and that they don't think of employers as consumers of labor, though understandable, is a consequence of not incorporating
comparative advantage into their ponderings and results in their failing to grasp (thus they disagree with) what economics/economists assert regarding the gains of free trade, most especially when the discussion the turns to free trade and wages. Be that as it may, the price gains from free trade are relative price gains not nominal price gains.
With definitions out of the way, let's get back to the topic at hand. Now fortunately for me (because I won't have to write it all out myself), there is a great "discussion" that took place between three blog writers wherein they address in general and nuanced terms how free trade lowers prices. I strongly suggest reading them because since they have done so and done it well, I'm not going to to.
Additionally,
The Economist has a great "connecting the dots" essay on the matter of free trade, prices and politics that is well worth reading.
Blue and Pink (correlating nominal price with relative price):
I'm not at all clear on why you asked the "pink-blue" question because the answer to it is readily available. I'll point you to some sites that will facilitate your obtaining an objective, empirical, answer to your question, but I'm not going to do it for you. You strike me as the sort who needs to do it for yourself because my simply telling you the answer that the research will produce is almost certain, IMO, to result in a reply saying I'm wrong.
(That's been the trend with so many other economic points that I've made or explained here, and I see no reason to think it won't repeat itself. I'm preparing to end my term on USMB, so I'm at the point of saying "I'll do my best in a discrete sense to help folks 'get it' -- the economics of things -- but I'm no longer willing to forcefully argue the point with folks who routinely show by their remarks that they don't really understand economics. That's not an insult; it's not about members here. It's about me and what it is about me is apathy. I truly don't any longer care enough to bother.)
One thing worth noting is that one's choice of prior year can have a huge impact on whether a price has become more impactful to consumers. That, along with other things, can be seen in the graphic below.
Here're some sites that one may use to examine how relative and nominal prices have changed over time (pay close attention to whether prices shown are inflation adjusted or not):
- Inflation
- Prices over Time
- Income
There you go. You should be able to figure out using those resources each of the following:
- The rate of price change before and after the implementation of free trade agreements and China's entry into the WTO (the impact of that being that the U.S. can't arbitrarily impose tariffs on imported Chinese goods)
- The relative cost of goods/services over time
- The impact of price changes on individuals in various income brackets
- The change in the price of comparably functional goods/services (e.g., an electric typewriter vs. a word processing software package, or a typewriter vs a word processing package, a personal computer and printer)
- Get a sense of how technology has affected the prices of things
- Roughly measure the impact of technology in our lives and thus the corresponding price impact.
