Bordernomics

As that shift occurred, longstanding personal and communal relationships were disrupted. We learn about displaced workers who had been employed at operations like Maytag’s manufacturing plant in Galesburg, Illinois. Broughton once taught at Knox College, in Galesburg, so he provides ample stories about people whose lives were upended by the 2002 closing of that Maytag facility. At the same time, opportunities were born in Mexico for families searching for more fruitful jobs, especially after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in 1994. We learn about Mexican workers who found employment in the new Maytag factory in Reynosa, many of them having previously struggled for gainful work in more impoverished Mexican states.

The sociology of economic change is important to understand, and Broughton provides a strong sociological picture. Transformations are about human lives, not talking points in a debate or bottom line statements. Yet old orders do change, and that can lead to progress, even if progress doesn’t appear obvious at first. Gutenberg printed Bibles, upending monastic control over what believers could learn. Machines upgraded grueling farm and factory jobs, eventually moving many Americans into better-paying work. The Internet has upended the publishing world, forcing many writers and journalists to learn new digital skills.

Change has led to progress as well, across North America. The region has evolved into a place where Mexicans, Canadians, and Americans make products together. The best example is automobiles, where some parts are made in Mexico or Canada, the car is assembled in the United States, and the final product is sold across North America and elsewhere. This system evolved into an effective way of making a car. Naturally, as new orders appear, many become wistful for the old ones. We certainly encounter plenty of wistfulness in Broughton’s reporting: We hear people decrying, as Broughton writes, “free trade, the ‘religion of greed,’ and runaway global capitalism.” Critics even called the Maytag plant’s closing “economic terrorism.”

Some employees did not make the pivot into the new order either. For example, one laid-off Maytag worker eschewed federal retraining benefits and bought a bar; thereafter, his story was downwardly mobile. He was among nearly half of Maytag employees who did not retrain, according to research separately done by Maytag and Broughton; but the other half did prepare for a new day. As an example, we learn about one worker who returned to community college to become a radiology technician. She saw the closing of the plant as a second chance, allowing her to help people with health needs. She kept reinventing herself, ultimately becoming a railroad conductor.

Old orders have changed in Mexico, too. As Maytag and other companies opened up plants in places like Reynosa—which sits on the other side of the Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas—economic growth started churning on both sides of the border. Reynosa became a haven for maquiladora factories, just as McAllen thrived off the supply chains that flowed goods across the border. Reynosa doubled in population between 1990 and 2005, while McAllen boomed from almost 38,000 people in 1970 to about 107,000 in 2000.

Change transformed more than border towns. Economic growth in northern Mexico attracted workers from poorer states like Veracruz, which rests along Mexico’s eastern Gulf Coast. Here, too, Broughton reports on the human aspect of Mexico’s internal transformation. Among other results, we learn about the drying-up of villages as workers head north to manufacturing operations. Indeed, lives were changed and new familial trajectories set; but it is hard to deny that this shift within Mexico has led to a rise in prosperity. You can see this in new shopping malls in places like Ciudad Juárez, and you can see it in the raw data: The Economist has reported that while Mexico still has grinding poverty, GDP has steadily climbed over the past quarter-century. Even one of the many NAFTA critics included here acknowledges that the treaty opened up opportunities for women.

Of course, there is plenty here for those who dislike the transformative nature of globalization. But those who think the old order was dandy until NAFTA came along make a faulty assumption. By the 1980s, automation and new technologies were changing the nature of work. This included making factories more productive and holding down the cost of goods. Also, change was bound to occur in North America with or without the United States participating in NAFTA: China, Japan, and Germany were among the foreign businesses investing in plants in Mexico. If the U.S. had decided against upgrading economic relationships across North America, we merely would have been forsaking a home-court advantage.

Moreover, if the movement of goods, labor, and capital across the continent upsets you, you need to explain why you would prefer paying higher prices for consumer items such as automobiles and electronics. Cars that Detroit rolls out would cost considerably more if not for parts made for less in Mexico or Canada. And the shifting of the old order through technology, automation, and globalization has led to more high-skilled, innovative factory work here in the United States.

Not long ago I interviewed workers in a sophisticated distribution factory in Frisco, Texas, a booming, prosperous Dallas suburb. The factory relies on robots as well as workers who guide the robots. The workers apply their knowledge of math, science, and engineering to guide the robots, and the skills needed in this factory require higher-order thinking, which, in the long run, can grow our economy and lead to better-paying jobs. All of which is part of a changing global economy.

We can lament this, as many in Boom, Bust, Exodus do; or we can adapt. History consistently shows that adapting is the better route.

William McKenzie is editor of the Catalyst: A Journal of Ideas from the Bush Institute.