Is NAFTA Good? Americans Split On North American Free Trade Agreement As Trump Vows To Renegotiate

President Donald Trump has called the North American Free Trade Agreement many things— among them “a catastrophe” and “the worst trade deal in history.” During a speech Friday at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump doubled down on his attack on the agreement. The president has very clearly voiced his disdain for the deal, but what does the American public think?

The people were almost evenly divided in their view of NAFTA, according to a Gallup poll released Friday. The results showed 48 percent of Americans thought the agreement was good for the United States, while 46 percent thought it was bad. Views on the deal were largely split along age and party lines.

Sixty-seven percent of Democrats viewed it as a positive for the country, while only 22 percent of Republicans did. Those numbers are vastly different from the results of Gallup’s 2004 survey on NAFTA, in which 40 percent of Republicans and 39 percent of Democrats said it was good for the country.

The highest support for the agreement came from young people. Seventy-three percent of respondents aged 18 to 29 thought NAFTA was good for the U.S., the largest percentage of any age group surveyed.

NAFTA was signed into agreement by President Bill Clinton in 1994. The compact between Mexico, the U.S. and Canada eliminated most of the tariffs between the three nations in order to allow freer trade among them and made it easier for American companies to move to Mexico.

Trump repeatedly railed against the agreement during his campaign and after he took office. Earlier in February, the president said he had “serious concerns” about NAFTA but wasn’t sure whether he’d change it or renegotiate it entirely.

In some instances, however, disdain for the deal crossed party lines. Bernie Sanders, who voted against NAFTA, said it and other similar agreements had “cost us millions in decent-paying jobs and caused a ‘race to the bottom’ which has lowered wages for American workers.”

“If President Trump is serious about a new policy to help American workers,” Sanders said. “Then I would be delighted to work with him.”