I remember the presidential election of 1992 very clearly. I had a nighttime class in U.S. history as part of a master’s degree I was pursuing when the results came in. Ross Perot, billionaire from Texas who had railed against the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), got 19 percent of the vote.
This was remarkable for three things:
First, it proved that elections in America can be run efficiently. Can you imagine all the results being tabulated and announced before 9 pm. Pacific Time?
Second, Ross Perot’s share of the vote guaranteed that George Herbert Walker Bush, who once had an approval rating of 92 percent, would lose. Republicans and independents, who had previously supported Bush and Ronald Reagan befoe him, fled to Perot, handing the election to a womanizer from Arkansas named Bill Clinton, who actually would become a fairly moderate and successful president.
Third and most importantly, Ross Perot was right. There would be a “giant sucking sound” as Mexico and other nations stole jobs from America thanks to NAFTA.
Perot’s exact words during the 1992 presidential campaign were:
“We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It’s pretty simple: If you’re paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, … have no health care—that’s the most expensive single element in making a car— have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don’t care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south.”
Now, Donald Trump is taking on the formidable task of building back the manufacturing infrastructure of America and along with it many of the jobs lost to NAFTA. Will he succeed?
My guess is he’ll do a lot but fall short of a complete ressurection of the American economy. That should be enough to “Make America Great Again.”