From NAFTA to the NAU: NAFTA and the Security and Prosperity Partnership are gradual steps toward merging the United States, Mexico, and Canada into a North American Union.(SPECIAL REPORT: REGIONAL GOVERNANCE)(North American Free Trade Agreement,)

In a few moments, I will sign three agreements that will complete our negotiations with Mexico and Canada to create a North American Free Trade Agreement. In the coming months I will submit this pack to Congress for approval ....

And, though the fight will be difficult, I deeply believe we will win. And I'd like to tell you why. First of all, because NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't support this agreement.

So spoke President Bill Clinton on September 14, 1993, as he kicked off his campaign to win congressional approval for NAFTA. President Clinton called on Americans to resist "the fear tactics and the adverseness to change that is behind much of the opposition to NAFTA." Of the 19 serious economic studies of the potential effects of NAFTA, he said, "18 of them have concluded that there will be no job loss."

But Mr. Clinton went further. "I believe that NAFTA will create 200,000 American jobs in the first two years of its effect," he declared. In fact, said he, "I believe that NAFTA will create a million jobs in the first five years of its impact."

President Clinton was joined in the East Room of the White House by an impressive bipartisan lineup of former presidents: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush (Senior). Like President Clinton, the former White House occupants extolled the virtues of NAFTA, insisted that bipartisan support for the measure was of utmost urgency, and assured Americans that the agreement would create many new jobs, not send them out of the country, as NAFTA opponents were claiming.

Of course, virtually everyone now knows that Clinton, Carter, Ford, and Bush--along with all the other NAFTA cheerleaders--were dead wrong. By 2006, NAFTA had cost the United States over a million jobs according to the Economic Policy Institute--although some estimates are much higher--and devastated entire industry sectors, as the article on page 10 recounts.

However, as important as the loss of those jobs and businesses are to our economy, there is another even more important impact that has, until recently, gone largely unnoticed and undebated. As the NAFTA bandwagon was being launched, some critics, including most especially this magazine, were pointing out that the real issue was not about genuine free trade, let alone the jobs that that trade would supposedly create. Nor was it about protectionism. No, what was really at issue in the thousands of pages ...