Every time politi­cians look to pass a new free trade agree­ment like the Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship (TPP), they reas­sure the Amer­i­can peo­ple that this time around, work­ers will be pro­tect­ed. But my research on and expe­ri­ences in a small indus­tri­al town in Illi­nois — not to men­tion even a cur­so­ry glance at the broad­er data on the impact of such deals — reveals that ​“free trade” has been a night­mare for most of the Amer­i­can peo­ple. And Gales­burg, Illi­nois — which, odd­ly enough, has a long-stand­ing his­to­ry with Pres­i­dent Oba­ma — is a poster child for why free trade deals are a prob­lem rather than a solu­tion to the pre­car­i­ous real­i­ty expe­ri­enced by most work­ing- and mid­dle-class Americans.

In 1994, Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton worked large­ly with Repub­li­cans in Con­gress to pass the North Amer­i­can Free Trade Agree­ment (NAF­TA) that dras­ti­cal­ly reduced tar­iffs and oth­er ​“trade bar­ri­ers” intend­ed to spur greater cross-bor­der trade and invest­ment. How­ev­er, as bil­lion­aire-turned-pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ross Per­ot famous­ly said at the time, ​“If this agree­ment is signed as it is cur­rent­ly draft­ed, the next thing you will hear will be a giant suck­ing sound as the remain­der of our man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs — what’s left after the two mil­lion that went to Asia in the 1980s — get pulled across our south­ern border.”

Sad­ly for Amer­i­can work­ers, Per­ot — and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al major­i­ty who vot­ed against the treaty — were right. Even Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has admit­ted that NAF­TA result­ed in mas­sive job loss­es for Amer­i­can work­ers when cor­po­ra­tions made the eco­nom­i­cal­ly ratio­nal choice and moved pro­duc­tion to Mex­i­co, where the wages were much low­er and gov­ern­men­tal reg­u­la­tion of indus­try (think clean air and water) much less stringent.

Now, for the past few years and almost entire­ly in secret, the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion has been nego­ti­at­ing with a dozen oth­er Pacif­ic Rim nations to cre­ate a mam­moth new ​“free trade” zone, named the TPP. The Admin­is­tra­tion asserts that the TPP will ​“expand oppor­tu­ni­ty for Amer­i­can work­ers, farm­ers, ranch­ers, and busi­ness­es.” Accord­ing to this ​“log­ic,” fur­ther low­er­ing trade bar­ri­ers (already much low­er than before the 1990s) will increase Amer­i­can exports and, hence, Amer­i­can jobs.

Of course, Oba­ma claims that the TPP will be dif­fer­ent than NAF­TA: That all the cor­po­ra­tions that could ben­e­fit from low­er wages in anoth­er nation already have left and that this treaty’s labor and envi­ron­men­tal pro­vi­sions will be bet­ter enforced though details are shock­ing­ly absent. Log­i­cal­ly, if the deal is so good, it begs the ques­tion as to why Oba­ma will not share the details with the Amer­i­can peo­ple rather than insist­ing on secre­cy and fast track authority.

The expe­ri­ence of a typ­i­cal, small indus­tri­al town in west­ern Illi­nois named Gales­burg sug­gests cause for alarm. I start­ed vis­it­ing Gales­burg in 2000 after I was hired to teach U.S. His­to­ry at a uni­ver­si­ty in near­by Macomb. With­in a few years, I start­ed to meet peo­ple who had been laid off from the May­tag plant there; many of them had become stu­dents late in life as they tried to retrain after the May­tag plant shut­down. One such stu­dent was the son of a retired May­tag work­er who was so angry and elo­quent about the hor­rif­ic impacts of NAF­TA that he tried to con­vince me to write a book about the dev­as­tat­ing impacts of this trade deal on America’s indus­tri­al econ­o­my. With his help, I con­duct­ed a series of inter­views with for­mer May­tag work­ers on the eve of its final closure.

Gales­burg is home to a lib­er­al arts col­lege, Knox, and became an impor­tant rail­road hub in the mid 19th cen­tu­ry. Due to its prox­im­i­ty to Chica­go (about 200 miles) and being a trans­porta­tion cen­ter (first rail­roads and, with the lat­er con­struc­tion of inter­state high­ways, truck­ing), Gales­burg became a thriv­ing indus­tri­al town in 20th cen­tu­ry. A vari­ety of fac­to­ries locat­ed there. But­ler employ­ees built steel pre­fab­ri­cat­ed build­ings includ­ing grain silos. Out­board Motor Cor­po­ra­tion built engines for boats. Admi­ral built refrig­er­a­tors and, lat­er, May­tag pur­chased this factory.

Many of these jobs became union­ized in the post-World War II era, result­ing in a thriv­ing pop­u­la­tion of blue-col­lar work­ers with mid­dle-class incomes. Even today, a short vis­it to Gales­burg reveals the many fine hous­es built there, a clear mark­er of the town’s his­toric wealth.

Alas, the his­to­ry of man­u­fac­tur­ing in Gales­burg reflects the fact that the cap­i­tal­ist desire to reduce costs in any locale is a pow­er­ful and inex­orable one. Per­haps the first tech­nique used by Amer­i­can employ­ers was to play work­ers of dif­fer­ent races, eth­nic­i­ties, gen­ders and nation­al­i­ties against each oth­er to low­er wages. Then, Fredrick Winslow Tay­lor intro­duced ​“sci­en­tif­ic man­age­ment” to increase ​“effi­cien­cy” and max­i­mize pro­duc­tion. Cor­po­ra­tions intro­duced automa­tion to fur­ther increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. In the late 20th cen­tu­ry, a series of U.S. pres­i­dents pro­mot­ed trade deals that facil­i­tat­ed the move­ment of man­u­fac­tur­ing — i.e. mil­lions of jobs — to oth­er nations.

In 1992, Bill Clin­ton was elect­ed pres­i­dent as a ​“New Demo­c­rat.” New, it seemed, meant Repub­li­can-lite, for many of his poli­cies were tak­en from the Repub­li­can play­book: cuts to wel­fare, ​“don’t ask, don’t tell” and the Defense of Mar­riage Act (both anti-gay mea­sures), harsh­er sen­tences for those con­vict­ed of drug crimes and a gen­er­al expan­sion of pris­ons and puni­tive law enforce­ment. And NAFTA.

Where­as rank-and-file Democ­rats and most elect­ed Democ­rats loud­ly opposed NAF­TA, Clin­ton bro­kered a deal — large­ly with Repub­li­can votes — to get it through Con­gress in 1994. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lane Evans, who rep­re­sent­ed the Gales­burg area and con­sid­ered quite lib­er­al, vot­ed against NAF­TA. (Inter­est­ing­ly, then-Sen­a­tor Joe Biden, a Demo­c­rat from Delaware, vot­ed against NAF­TA, too.)

J.B. John­son, whose father and girlfriend’s par­ents had retired from May­tag, told me in 2005, ​“When Clin­ton signed in NAF­TA, … that’s when I start­ed think­ing — you know we’re union up north here and I always had a fun­ny feel­ing back of mind, there’s a good chance of them leaving.”

Sure enough, short­ly after the pas­sage of NAF­TA, as John­son, Per­ot, and many oth­ers pre­dict­ed, Gales­burg heard that giant suck­ing sound: May­tag announced it would move to Mex­i­co. Though it took the com­pa­ny anoth­er decade to com­plete­ly shut down its Gales­burg facil­i­ty, Maytag’s announce­ment sent shock­waves through the town. As Car­ol Mar­shall, anoth­er May­tag work­er who I inter­viewed in 2005 on the eve of the final shut­down, said, ​“Both my par­ents worked at May­tag, my grand­fa­ther, my aunt, my uncle. I used to joke that it kept our fam­i­ly off the wel­fare rolls.” For years after­wards, locals referred to Maytag’s announce­ment as ​“ten eleven.”

Under­stand­ably, the near­ly 2,000 work­ers employed there sus­pect­ed they nev­er would find as good of a job. The rest of the com­mu­ni­ty also feared the worst as those good-pay­ing May­tag jobs helped the econ­o­my of the entire com­mu­ni­ty, coun­ty and sur­round­ing areas.

The effects of Maytag’s depar­ture were imme­di­ate and glar­ing. Unem­ploy­ment increased dras­ti­cal­ly. House con­struc­tion dropped to near­ly zero and the real estate mar­ket froze. Pop­u­la­tion declined. Erin Nel­son, anoth­er May­tag work­er I inter­viewed, par­tic­u­lar­ly lament­ed that she imme­di­ate­ly lost her health insur­ance though her chil­dren qual­i­fied for state assis­tance; she com­plained to me, under­stand­ably so, ​“Who can afford antibi­otics that are $70 for 28 pills?” Ten years on, the povery lev­el has increased to 19 per­cent, and Gales­burg has seen about 15 per­cent of its pop­u­la­tion leave since 2000.

Gales­burg also hap­pens to have a sur­pris­ing­ly deep and long con­nec­tion to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma. In fact, Gales­burg was ​“name-checked” in the speech that launched his nation­al polit­i­cal career. At the 2004 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, Oba­ma famous­ly declared that Amer­i­cans have ​“more work to do, for the work­ers I met in Gales­burg, Illi­nois, who are los­ing their union jobs at the May­tag plant that’s mov­ing to Mex­i­co, and now they’re hav­ing to com­pete with their own chil­dren for jobs that pay sev­en bucks an hour.” He had vis­it­ed the town some months ear­li­er, not long before the last refrig­er­a­tor rolled off the assem­bly line.

Less than a year lat­er, he gave a speech at Knox Col­lege and said some­thing sim­i­lar: ​“Here in Gales­burg, you know what this new chal­lenge is. You’ve seen it. You see it when you dri­ve by the old May­tag plant around lunchtime and no one walks out any­more. I saw it dur­ing the cam­paign when I met the union guys who use to work at the plant and now won­der what they’re gonna do at 55-years-old with­out a pen­sion or health care; when I met the man who’s son needs a new liv­er but does­n’t know if he can afford when the kid gets to the top of the trans­plant list.”

Even then, per­haps sur­pris­ing­ly, Oba­ma gave hints that his ​“solu­tion” would be more of what Clin­ton had to offer: embrac­ing cor­po­rate-dri­ven glob­al­iza­tion. In his 2005 speech at Knox, Oba­ma laud­ed Thomas Fried­man, New York Times colum­nist and globalization’s pied-piper. Tech­nol­o­gy had changed the world, he said: ​“Today, account­ing firms are email­ing your tax returns to work­ers in India who will fig­ure them out and send them back as fast as any work­er in Indi­ana could.” It was unclear why that was deemed a good thing for those Knox graduates.

Fast for­ward to 2013, when Oba­ma returned to Gales­burg to cham­pi­on, yet again, anoth­er of his efforts to renew America’s mid­dle class. He acknowl­edged that the town had suf­fered (with­out overt­ly invok­ing NAF­TA), ​“What had swept through a lot of towns through­out the Mid­west and North­east had hap­pened in Gales­burg, where peo­ple were left high and dry.” As a result, the ​“tax base had declined, unem­ploy­ment had soared, a lot of folks out of work; the jobs that replaced them gen­er­al­ly were jobs that paid a much low­er wage.”

All true. Some res­i­dents found work in the mod­est­ly expand­ing rail­road indus­try (Burling­ton North­ern San­ta Fe still main­tains a large oper­a­tion), oth­ers at a John Deere fac­to­ry 50 miles north in Moline. How­ev­er, most laid off from May­tag who found work had jobs that were far less lucra­tive or with­out ben­e­fits; many found no work what­so­ev­er. Alas, it was not clear what Obama’s solu­tion was to their plight — the plight of mil­lions of oth­er Amer­i­cans, too.

Now, in 2015, it seems we now know what Obama’s solu­tion is and it does not seem much dif­fer­ent from Clinton’s and his Repub­li­can allies: just sub­sti­tute TPP for NAF­TA. How TPP will help Gales­burg res­i­dents find good-pay­ing jobs with ben­e­fits is not clear. What is clear is that Oba­ma still thinks that the U.S. gov­ern­ment must make it even eas­i­er for cor­po­ra­tions to move pro­duc­tion and cap­i­tal around the world while Amer­i­can work­ers drop fur­ther and fur­ther behind.

A lit­tle over 10 years on from the last refrig­er­a­tor rolling off the line, Gales­burg has not entire­ly col­lapsed; that’s a tes­ta­ment to the resilien­cy of peo­ple with their backs to the wall. But, their town is not the same. Sim­ply put, no ​“free trade” deal can replace a fac­to­ry that employed upwards of 2,000 peo­ple and every­one knows it.

Obvi­ous­ly, this prob­lem is much big­ger than Gales­burg. While Oba­ma claims that he wants to rebuild the mid­dle class by bring­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing back to the Unit­ed States, he’s only being half truth­ful. The real­i­ty is that Amer­i­ca still could lose mil­lions more man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs if TPP is signed.

David Simon’s work­ing stiff from sea­son two of his hit tele­vi­sion show The Wire, Frank Sobot­ka, iden­ti­fied the ulti­mate issue: ​“You know what the prob­lem is? We used to make shit in this coun­try, build shit. Now we just put our hands in anoth­er guy’s pock­et.” The for­mer pres­i­dent of the Gales­burg May­tag machin­ists union, Dave Bevard, said some­thing sim­i­lar to The Atlantic​’s Chad Broughton last year: ​“I don’t know of an econ­o­my that can sur­vive on the prin­ci­ple of ​‘You mow my lawn, and I’ll wash your dish­es.’ We’re great because we make things.”

Oba­ma actu­al­ly said sim­i­lar dur­ing his 2013 vis­it to Gales­burg: ​“But we can do more… I know there’s an old site right here in Gales­burg, over on Mon­mouth Boule­vard — let’s put some folks to work!” Indeed, let’s.

In 2005, on his sec­ond vis­it to Gales­burg, Oba­ma claimed, ​“Ten or 20 years down the road, that old May­tag plant could re-open its doors as an Ethanol refin­ery that turns corn into fuel.” Leav­ing aside that corn-based ethanol proved a dead-end, undoubt­ed­ly the peo­ple of Gales­burg still hope he is right — that Galesburg’s for­mer pro­duc­tive capac­i­ty can be restored.

Yet I can imag­ine my friend and for­mer stu­dent, the son of a May­tag work­er and a com­bat vet­er­an of the first Gulf War, scream­ing obscen­i­ties about the big lie that is TPP. And, my research on the effects of NAF­TA on Gales­burg echoes that sus­pi­cion. Oth­er than vague promis­es about ​“unlock­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty,” I find it hard to believe that TPP will do any­thing to assist the peo­ple of Gales­burg or oth­er towns like it. They — we — are still wait­ing for the ben­e­fits of ​“free trade.” Oba­ma has not yet made it clear how TPP will help the peo­ple of Gales­burg or any Amer­i­can worker.