Sylvia Smith Continues Bogus NAFTA Reporting
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 3/30/08 @ 10:38 am - Filed Under 2008 National Elections, Featured, National Politics
Sylvia Smith has yet another fact-contorting NAFTA hit piece in today’s JG. Let me just say that her story is a prime example of what’s wrong with traditional media. Readers of the JG want to know they’re getting facts and analysis that are irreproachable and not just a regurgitation of spin from two sides of an issue.
Sometimes the facts actually support one side of the argument and it would be nice if Smith actually tried to discern the facts from the spin in this case. Her story today not only presents bogus statistics but it gives equal weight to opinions that are not supported by any facts.
So let’s dissect this nonsense from the JG one claim at a time:
Since NAFTA went into effect, Indiana exports have grown steadily, from $11 billion in 1996 to $22.6 billion in 2006.
I can’t believe she’s still rehashing this bogus statistic. As I pointed out in my last post on this topic looking at exports without looking at imports is futile. Without including both inputs and outputs Smith can’t even argue that she’s studying trade. Of course she surely knows that this state and this country has a massive trade deficit.
The per-capita income in Indiana in 1994, the year NAFTA took effect, was $20,761. Today it’s $33,616, an increase of 62 percent. But per-capita income in the U.S. increased 74 percent during the same time.
This is the most bogus statistic I’ve ever seen printed in the JG and frankly Sylvia Smith owes her readers an apology. The numbers Smith is using here are not adjusted for inflation. If you adjust these numbers for inflation based on the CPI then today’s per-capita income in Indiana is $24,028 an increase of 16% In Allen County the numbers are even worse with the increase from 1994-2005 (last year data was available) of only 4%. But the real eye-opener is found when you compare us to the rest of the US - we are drastically going in the wrong direction
Indiana economist Morton Marcus said NAFTA is “used as an excuse for any type of job loss.” He said it’s true that auto-industry workers in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan are feeling the effects of the problems in the industry, “but the industry is not in difficulty because of NAFTA.”
Other trade agreements, equally ill-designed as NAFTA, are hurting the automobile industry. As I pointed out before, Senator Byron Dorgan explained that the South Koreans sell over 600,000 cars here in the US (2002) and we sell less than 3000 over there. And it has nothing to do with anything but protectionist trade barriers put up by the Korean government.
For Weintraub, the candidates’ rhetoric makes no sense at all.
Obama, for example, said NAFTA has cost 1 million jobs, a claim Weintraub labeled “outrageous. He can’t demonstrate it.”
Well professor, it can be easily demonstrated as the Economic Policy Institute did. In fact they did it using the same statistical analysis you and other “free trade” champions used to argue why NAFTA was going to create millions of jobs. In hindsight you were wrong. And I won’t even get into the argument the pro-NAFTA crowd made back in 1994 that NAFTA would reduce illegal immigration - how’d that work out for us?
Sylvia Smith needs to present the facts on NAFTA to the JG readers. Manipulating and/or omitting data hurts her and the JG’s credibility. It is a fact that NAFTA has hurt the Indiana, and particularly the Allen County, economy. Only a crackpot or an embarrassed original NAFTA champion would claim otherwise…
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6 Responses to “Sylvia Smith Continues Bogus NAFTA Reporting”
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they all said einstein was a crackpot.
and: prophets are never recognized in their home towns- the bible.
read the book “the world is flat” by thomas friedman. this is about as accurate and understandable explained picture of current economic world/global reality.
Ross Perot warned about “the giant sucking sound” of jobs going south/overseas”
logic would say that to re=capture some of that revenue back to the economy, and taxpayers, we should impose an import tariff, to at least recoup some of the obscene corporate profits they are reaping from us- 390 billion from wal-mart alone. and wheres the consumer savings? only higher profit margins for the fat cats.
and mr pruitt- dont fall victim to our local version of the “pied piper”- mitch harper. trust me, i know, and you’ll find out soon enough.
I dont know the answers, except that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, there is growing talk of another “great dperession”, wall street is getting 500 billion in (socialism) bailouts (wish you could go to the fed, and have them hand you just a tiny million? we’d all be set for life)
figures lie, liars figure- and the poor wil be the ones hurt by this economy that the rich messed up. money doesnt disappear into thin air- so whose pockets is it going into? surely not average americans.
I’ve read Friedman’s book and it didn’t impress me. Then again he’s the same guy that admittedly didn’t know what countries CAFTA comprised of, or anything else about the agreement, before he penned an editorial supporting it.
Also, he’s the same clown that for about 5 years has repeatedly said we’re only 6 months away from turning a corner in Iraq - 4000 dead and counting.
Perot was right. Clinton (Hillary & Bill), Gore, the DLC in general, and basically every Republican was wrong. I’ll do a post sometime where I revisit the NAFTA debate held on Larry King Live between Perot and Gore. In hindsight it’s almost comical how wrong Gore was on NAFTA…
Jeff,
I agree with your column, only do not sell Friedman short. His thoughts on education are spot-on, however, the rest of his diatribe is certainly up for debate!
This country imports more than it exports because people are buying things on credit. If people lived within their means, it would be finacially impossible to maintain a trade deficit year after year.
Robert,
If you replace the word “people” with “government” then I agree with you. But as an individual I can just as easily spend my way into debt buying Made in the USA products as I can buying imports from China…
[...] And don’t forget her own reporting on NAFTA was extremely suspect as I demonstrated in a previous post. The underlying message I got from the callers and e-mailers was that the First Amendment and free [...]