Letters: The real blame for NAFTA

Donald Trump blames Hillary Clinton for the North American Free Trade Agreement and the catastrophic effects that it has had on working-class families because it was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

He has gotten away with it because he has been able to rewrite the history of NAFTA.

So, it’s useful to recall that it was during a 1992 debate — when then-President George H.W. Bush and the Republican Party were pushing the treaty — that independent presidential candidate Ross Perot called NAFTA “that giant sucking sound going south.” President Bush went on to sign the NAFTA agreement after the election, on Dec. 17, 1992.

Yes, President Clinton did sign the ratification a year later, but it was a done deal by the Republican president and Congress before he took office. Donald Trump says he would renegotiate NAFTA and get a better deal, implying that Democrats settled for a bad deal. The fact is that a Republican administration negotiated the bad deal, and laying the blame on the Democratic Party 24 years later is revisionist history at its worst.