That Giant Sucking Sound

The real end winner of NAFTA is going to be Mexico because we have the human capital that is vital to the success of the U.S. economy.

Vincente Fox (former president of Mexico)

What President Fox (2000-2006) meant by “human capital” was dirt-cheap labor that helped American CEOs boost operating profits between 1992 and 2004. In that span, US businesses moved a million jobs to Mexico, hired 2.9 million Mexican immigrants in the US, and bought 227% more imports from Mexico; i.e. $50.8 billion to $166.5 billion (source: USTR).

In 1992, two years before Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law, Ross Perot tried to warn his fellow Americans in a presidential debate. “Everybody on the factory floor all over this country knows it: you implement NAFTA, and you’re going to hear a giant sucking sound of jobs being pulled out of this country. Right when we need the tax base to pay down the debt and get our house back in order.”

Perot was 100% right about the economics that spawned the America First movement. Between 1992 and 2024, America’s trade shifted from a $7.7 billion surplus to a $171.8 billion deficit with Mexico, an $8 billion deficit to $35.7 billion deficit with Canada, and a $62.4 billion deficit to $1.2 trillion deficit with the world. The consequences upon “forgotten Americans” have been brutal.

Forgotten American: a native-born US citizen without a college degree who moves or works with materials, such as a truck driver or bandsaw operator.

No question, the pursuit of happiness for “forgotten Americans” took a turn for the worse after the 1992 election. To wit, Bush One left 18 million factory workers (32% of America’s non-farm workers), which dropped to 12.9 million (8% of the US workforce) with Biden. That’s 5.1 million lost jobs. Even worse, that’s 5.1 million families losing employer-provided healthcare and retirement plans, creating the “sucking sound” of welfare for folks who’d once earned their benefits.

As factories closed and borders opened from 1992 to 2024, labor participation rates for “forgotten Americans” dropped from 66.2% to 56.7% (source: BLS). That made illegal immigration a big election issue, especially after Democrats Obama and Biden invited illegal aliens ($17 average hourly wage) to compete against US citizens ($32 average hourly wage). The receipts are the job-creation data presented in the table below (source: BLS).

If you’re keeping score, Democrats “hired” 11.6 million foreign-born workers and only 4.6 million native-born in their 144 months in office, while the Republican “hired” 300,000 foreign-born workers and 8.5 million native-born in 54 months. What “everybody on the factory floor” knows is that Trump did right by native-born workers – and THAT is why Harris 2024 won 14.2% fewer working-class votes than Obama 2008.

And when Biden opened the border in 2021, he created the “sucking sound” in 2022 of immigrants taking home US wages of over $466 billion, and wiring $81 billion of that back to their homelands (source: American University). That was “right when we needed to pay down the debt.” Right again, Mr. Perot: US debt of $4.4 trillion with interest payments of $199 billion in 1992 had grown to $36.5 trillion with $1.1 trillion in interest payments last year.

These numbers are compelling but don’t begin to measure working-class anger for “globalists” like Hillary Clinton, which is best measured by the insouciance Trump voters have for his retributive behavior. Those hurt by Dem policies are glad to see the bullies finally get what’s coming to them. So, who are these victims?

• a “forgotten” mom in Ohio, whose son’s only financial path to college was service in Cheney’s never-ending war
• a toothless man in a “forgotten” town in Virginia, where the shuttered textile mill meant the loss of dental coverage
• a grieving family in Texas, whose “forgotten” son overdosed on fentanyl smuggled across the Mexican border
• the parents in a “forgotten” county in Georgia, where school closures forced their kids into extra-long bus rides
• a “forgotten” self-employed man in Vermont, whose health-insurance costs rose under Obamacare
• a “forgotten” auto-parts worker in Wisconsin, whose job was shifted to Canada
• a teacher in a “forgotten” Fresno (CA) high school, working longer days because immigrant kids need ESL tutoring

Mind you, these angry voters are real, pulled from local newspapers that liberal elites probably don’t read. Their stories are proof of the “giant sucking sound” created when a voter’s pursuit of happiness gets shipped off, shut down, or shape-shifted by arrogant politicians, who rarely suffer the consequences of their policies and positions.

Arrogant: having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s own abilities or importance (Oxford Dictionary).

In 1992, coastal Democrats and country-club Republicans were too arrogant to heed Ross Perot’s message or 19.7 million votes. And when life worsened for growing numbers of everyday folks, the terms “forgotten American” and “fly-over America” entered our political vocabulary to describe a populist movement begun by Ross Perot that begat the Tea Party that begat 77.3 million MAGA voters last November (see chart up top).

Clear proof of that (mostly Democrat) arrogance is how much back-filling Team Trump is doing today. Closing borders that should have never been opened. Deporting illegal aliens who should have never entered. Firing federal employees who should have never been hired. Re-shoring jobs that should have never been off-shored. Tariffing goods that should have never been out-sourced. Undoing DEI that should have never been hoisted upon a decent people. It is THAT simple…

…because so many voters were THAT angry.