NAFTA signed into law - Dec 08, 1993 - HISTORY.com

This totally destroyed what was left of the garment industry in NE Pa. I remember my mother working in one factory after another because all the garment factories closed down that quickly.

You can't really blame companies for leaving it's kinda the consumers fault. We demand cheap products which in turn tells companies to go overseas and produce cheap products.

@Alan K. It was supposed to set up something like an EU in the Americas. All it has done is made it so that companies move jobs out of the United States. Do we get cheap products? Yes. Does it matter how cheap a product is when people are trying decide between power and feeding the family? Not in the slightest. The United States has gone from a nation of producers to a nation of consumers. That is not long term sustainable. It ends up with a mass number of people reliant upon the government for survival. That reliance is funded by taxes. So as more and more become government dependents, the amount that is taken in in taxes has to go up. If made in the USA was the norm, not a novelty, we would have a strong middle class with fewer dependent upon government handouts. Not at all a well thought out long term plan. Really simply looking at the wages of American workers against those of Mexican workers should have told them that this was a bad idea.