CLEVELAND, Ohio - Thomas Christopher was in his early 50s when his manufacturing job was sent to Mexico because of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

"After working 24 years at the same place I thought it was almost the end of the world because I thought I would be there for ever," said the Sheffield Lake man, who was laid off in 2004 from Marconi Communications in Lorain.

About 50,000 primarily blue-collar workers in Ohio have lost jobs to NAFTA from 1994, when the free trade zone between the United States, Canada and Mexico was created, through 2016, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch in Washington, D.C. This ranked Ohio sixth nationally. Most of the jobs moved to Mexico, the analysis shows. Nationally, 928,378 jobs were lost.

Christopher retrained for a career in information technology, from which he retired in 2014. It would take him three years to land a job in his new career. Christopher's experience represents the often-touted promise that workers who lost jobs to NAFTA would be able to retrain for successful new careers. But his case also reflects the difficult reality of laid-off workers, who are often middle age, finding another good-paying job.

President Donald Trump has tapped into frustration about NAFTA job loss in Ohio and other states, saying he would renegotiate the trade deal to favor blue-collar workers - or even abolish it. With his administration now in NAFTA talks, the experience of blue-collar workers in Ohio raises the question of how to balance their concerns about job loss against those of manufacturers, who say they need the trade deal to remain globally competitive.

Canada and Mexico are Ohio's largest trading partners, according to the Ohio Development Services Agency. Nearly 40 percent, or $19.1 billion, of Ohio's exports went to Canada in 2016. Mexico was a distant second at 13 percent or $6.5 billion.

"Ohio exported more than 50 percent of our total goods to Canada or Mexico in 2016," said Ryan Augsburger, a vice president at the Ohio Manufacturers' Association. "Nationally, it is a third. Ohio is as big a NAFTA entity as any state in the country."

Manufacturers want renegotiations to focus on making it easier to move goods across borders, which they say could even increase Ohio's exports to the two countries. Many manufacturers and industry experts say that if NAFTA is eliminated or substantially revised, job loss would increase because production would move abroad, most likely to Asia. They say globalization has made it too costly to have high labor-intensive, low-skill factory work done in the U.S.

"Our members can make products anywhere in the world," Augsburger said. "We want them to make those products in Ohio."

Without tariffs, manufacturers have been able to create an integrated supply chain allowing them to have lower-skill, often low-tech, work done in Mexico -- where workers make considerable less than their American counterparts -- and higher-skill work, which often uses automation, done in the U.S.

Many blue-collar workers, unions and other supporters say the practice has resulted in too many good-paying jobs going elsewhere. They say scrapping NAFTA or overhauling it are the only options.

"I don't have a problem with global competition, but I don't think our country should be where we are taking away our manufacturing base," said Mark Payne, president of UAW Local 1250, who has seen members' jobs sent to Mexico.

The analysis looked at Trade Adjustment Assistance data from the federal program that provides retraining to workers, who lose their jobs to foreign trade. (The average TAA cost per laid-off worker in Ohio was $16,076 during 2016-17, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.) Experts on both sides of the NAFTA debate agree the job loss figure is probably much higher because TAA doesn't include workers who indirectly lost jobs to trade. A worker whose job was sent to Mexico would get TAA. A worker laid off from a supplier whose business suffered because its best customer moved abroad, wouldn't.

Then there is the even larger question of whether TAA helps a laid-off worker get another good-paying job. Christopher worked in landscaping and other odd jobs as he actively looked for IT employment.

"I burned through a lot of money trying to keep my household going," he said. "I mean tens of thousands had to be pulled out of the bank. I had a 401(k). I had to pull almost all of it out. I was getting kind of depressed."

Is retraining best option?

Daniel Ujczo, president of the Ohio-Canada Business Association, testified before U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in June. Ujczo said it is important for an updated NAFTA to balance workers' concerns about job loss with the desire of businesses to remain globally competitive. He said manufacturers need easier access moving goods across borders and workers need more than TAA.

"I think TAA was a failure," Ujczo, a lawyer with Dickinson Wright in Columbus, said recently. "It gets some people jobs, but what do we do with our Baby Boomer workers, who were displaced by trade?"

A U.S. International Trade Commission review of TAA studies, released in May, found the program had a "neutral to slightly positive effect on employment" and "mixed effects on wages," perhaps because of the Great Recession.

Retraining for the in-demand IT field was easy for Christopher, who began in the 1980s fixing computers as a hobby. He used TAA benefits to get three certifications as an Information Technology Specialist.

"I applied a bunch of different places, I had interviews, but I didn't get the job," he said. "They can deny it all they want to, but I think because of my age, it was tough getting hired. I was very discouraged."

Ujczo proposes that the Workforce Initiative for North America, or WINA, be part of NAFTA, so that laid-off workers can make a smooth transition to a new career.

"A lot of this is happening at the state and county level and at the provincial level, but nobody is looking at it from a cross-border perspective to share resources, best practices, training programs, etc.," he said.

Employers would also take part to ensure workers were being trained for openings.

Nick "Sonny" Nardi, president and principal officer of Teamsters Local No. 416, agrees TAA hasn't helped many workers. He would rather focus on keeping jobs in the U.S. than a workforce initiative. He's seen members' jobs go to Mexico, including more than 300 from Mr. Coffee in 2000.

"This globalization thing went too far too fast," Nardi said. "They didn't think about the long-term effect."

Will the jobs ever return?

Payne, the UAW president, is reminded of NAFTA's effects daily when he looks out of his office window to an expansive empty lot across the street. Ford's Brook Park Cleveland Casting Plant, which made engine blocks and other engine components, once stood there. More than 1,100 of the jobs went to Mexico.

"I am not going to accept this as being the new normal," he said.

Nor is Lori Wallach, Global Trade Watch's director. She said NAFTA renegotiations should focus on U.S. jobs.

"There are specific rules in NAFTA that incentivize offshoring," Wallach said. "It makes it cheaper and less risky for companies to go."

Bernard Swiecki, director of the Automotive Communities Partnership at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said unlinking Mexico from the supply chain would only hurt U.S. workers.

"Forty percent of the value of a car that is assembled in Mexico is built by Americans," he said. "If you pass a drastic tariff or other means of that vehicle not being built in Mexico, then the car company says, 'We already make in China, Europe or elsewhere, so well just bring it in from there.' So, it goes from 40 percent to maybe single digit U.S. content."

Edward "Ned" Hill, a manufacturing expert at Ohio State University, said China entering the World Trade Organization in 2001 had a greater impact on U.S. jobs than NAFTA. Ohio's non-NAFTA job loss was more than three times that of NAFTA losses, the analysis showed.

"What WTO really did was introduce a flood of low-skilled/semi-skilled labor globally," he said. "If you got rid of NAFTA, it is not like all the jobs are coming back."

Christopher said he understands manufacturers' position about global competition, but he also wants them to understand the "human cost" when workers are displaced by foreign trade.

"Job security is very important to human life," he said. "You need that income. I know what it is like to be one paycheck away from being out on the street."

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