Leadership Quote by Stephen F. Lynch

Dropping a statistic like a gauntlet, Lynch frames NAFTA not as a trade pact but as a jobs-and-wages crime scene with Mexico as the body. The specific intent is tactical: shift the moral burden of “free trade” onto its human costs, and do it with numbers that sound settled enough to foreclose debate. “1.9 million jobs” is calibrated outrage - big, concrete, media-friendly. Pairing it with “most Mexicans’ real wages have fallen” widens the indictment from a single labor market disruption to an across-the-board downward pressure on living standards. It’s not just lost jobs; it’s a rigged system.

The subtext is equally American. By emphasizing Mexican displacement, Lynch can argue that NAFTA didn’t just “hurt” Mexico; it set in motion the push factors behind migration, instability, and cross-border economic stress that U.S. politicians prefer to treat as separate problems. It’s a way of saying: if you want fewer desperate border crossings, stop writing agreements that hollow out livelihoods. There’s also a quiet rebuke to the bipartisan, 1990s-era consensus that trade liberalization is automatically modernization.

Context matters because the NAFTA story has always been contested: some sectors grew, export corridors boomed, consumer prices shifted, and measurement fights (what counts as “lost” jobs, what baseline wages) are perennial. Lynch’s line isn’t trying to adjudicate all that complexity. It’s built to puncture the glossy narrative of win-win integration by spotlighting who paid for it - and to justify renegotiation, labor protections, or outright skepticism of the next “historic” deal.