The recent General Motors announcement must serve as a major wake up call – for the entire nation, not only workers.

The GM announcement highlights the grievous flaw in the old NAFTA, which remains with the new one as currently negotiated.

Mexico’s persistent, suppressed low wages of a few dollars per hour caused a major outsourcing of vehicle and supplier production to Mexico, suppressing American wages and creating job loss.

A signing of the new NAFTA as negotiated and implemented to date will only bake in the old NAFTA for another 30 years, absent dramatic new changes in law and in practice. Not changes in rules of origin or loose talk about tariffs.

The outsourcing over the years to Mexico involved trucks and SUVs and their components, now the major source of American purchases for passenger vehicles.

The failure to act on our past pleas to face up to this reality will hopefully now be heard and acted on by responsible parties.