Then why did young voters support an anti-free trade candidate in the Democratic primary.
Not to worry, It's probably just knee jerk opposition to whatever they associate with Trump, much like how Republican support for universal healthcare and Cap and Trade collapsed after Obama was inaugurated.
I think Cashew is hitting this nail pretty squarely on the head here....
Most Millennials never really heard too much about NAFTA, unless it was their parents complaining about it when they were kids....
Trump starts using it as a campaign prop as part of building a "compare and contrast" argument with Clinton to appeal to Middle-Aged and Older voters that saw the immediate impact, as well as bagging a bunch of Perot '92 voters, "Rust Belt" WWC voters, Trade Union members, etc that saw all of the negative impacts and none of the positive impacts. This was part of a deliberate strategy to expand his attacks towards her promotion of TPP.
Additionally, with an increasing share of younger voters from Mexican-American backgrounds there is a slightly different perspective, since for those with family and relatives South of the Border, it did help benefit both of the growth of a Mexican Middle-Class in the border towns, as well as communities directly North of the border....
It was really MFN status with China where things started to go dramatically South for both Mexican manufacturing and American Manufacturing, only a few years after NAFTA was signed into law...
Obviously today there is really no major sense nor reason to "renegotiate NAFTA liked our esteemed President appeared to suggest. Many of the jobs initially outsourced to Mexico by MNCs trying to make a cheap buck, have now long since disappeared from Mexico and reappeared in various counties in East and Southeast Asia.
Further, it was completely idiotic to not include a expanded migration of labor program as part of NAFTA, and Trump massive deportation raids will hit squarely at the US agricultural sector, where we have been suffering a massive and chronic shortage of labor for decades.... if there is any renegotiation of NAFTA it should include a dramatic increase in foreign nationals working in low-wage sectors of the economy where there is a dramatic shortage of labor.
