For too long, debates over international trade have been dominated by corporate elites and economic idealogues, rather than rooted in the experiences of ordinary Americans.
The Trade Stories Project allows people who have been affected by policies and institutions like NAFTA and the WTO to share their views on a matter crucial to the global economy.
This includes displaced workers, farmers, small business owners and immigrants who have been typically excluded from the trade debate.
Jim Scheet
Dallas, OR
Jim moved his family out-of-state in search of work after losing his job making circuit boards at TTM/Tyco Electronics in Dallas, Oregon in 2007.
“I’ll never forget the day of the closure announcement the looks on the faces of some of these people. Absolute terror… I saw people crying uncontrollably. They had no idea what was going to happen to them. I saw a lot of my friends, 35, 50-years old—it still creeps me out. That’s what this thing has done to them…
“[Staying in the area] was never a question because it was just a given that the job market was dead. In the first half of ’07 roughly 1,500 jobs were lost in the Salem-Dallas area due to either mass layoffs or to closures.
“In my opinion, retraining would have just left me waiting a year or two and then competing for the same lack of jobs with the same people. It would have just delayed the inevitable. My only option was to move so that I could support my family…
“Either fix [NAFTA] or get rid of it, because it’s killing the communities.”