Presidential candidates’ views on trade are especially pertinent in Houston.

Trump’s misstatements about NAFTA and TPP are particularly pertinent to Houston.

In the spring of 1837, John James Audobon stepped off the steamer Yellow Rose on the west bank of Buffalo Bayou and got his first look at the new town of Houston, capital city of the Texas Republic. Sloshing through ankle-deep water to pay a visit to newly elected President Sam Houston, the famed naturalist and painter passed half-finished cabins, soggy tents and roofless buildings. A contingent of Cabinet members waited to welcome the distinguished visitor to the presidential “mansion,” a log cabin consisting of two rooms separated by a dog run.

Neither the president nor any other newly arrived Houstonian was in the mud- and malaria-ridden town for their health. Like the settlement’s founders, New York brothers Augustus and John Allen, they were there to make a killing in trade. An Allen brothers newspaper advertisement touting the new town put it this way: “Situated at the head of navigation on the West bank of Buffalo Bayou … (Houston) must ever command the trade of the largest and richest portion of Texas … and when the rich lands of this country shall be settled a trade will flow to it, making it, beyond all doubt, the great interior commercial emporium of Texas.”

And so it must. Nearly two centuries later, nothing has changed except the size and scope of our trading proclivities. According to the U.S. State Department, the nation’s fourth-largest city earns about $100 billion from exports every year, which makes us the largest exporting metropolitan area in the nation. Texas earns about $300 billion and is the largest exporting state. Trade is in our genes, not to mention our jeans pockets.

Given those figures, and given the jobs they represent, Texans have to take seriously an ill-informed presidential candidate who insists he’ll do everything he can to scuttle free-trade agreements, whether NAFTA or its successor, the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement with 11 PacificRim nations. They need to listen to a man who promises to pay for gargantuan tax cuts by reimposing tariffs that Republican presidents from William Howard Taft to George W. Bush have worked to eliminate.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that 3.5 million Americans making goods for export would be out of a job if Donald Trump’s trade and tariff proposals were implemented. It would seem that Texans, particularly Texans who live and work in the Houston area, would think twice about indulging their Hillary Clinton hatred and casting their vote for a man intent on destroying their livelihood.

Unfortunately, Clinton herself is running scared on trade. There was some truth to Trump’s charge in last week’s debate that Clinton turned against what she called the “gold standard” of trade agreements (the TPP) only after she became a presidential candidate. There’s probably some truth also to the suspicion that if she’s elected president she’ll find some way to accept some version of the accord.

Trump is more a demagogue than the deal-maker nonpareil he fancies himself to be. He insisted during the debate that because of our trade policies, “our jobs are fleeing the country.” (Actually, nearly 15 million new jobs have been created since economic recovery kicked in.) He targeted Ford for sending thousands of jobs to Mexico to build small cars. (Ford’s chief executive said “zero” American workers would lose their jobs.) He charged that China was devaluing its currency for unfair price advantages. (Actually, it’s now propping up the value of its currency.) He called NAFTA “the single worst trade deal ever approved in this country” and “one of the worst things that ever happened to the manufacturing industry.”

Trump’s misstatements about NAFTA and TPP are particularly pertinent to Houston. Last year, Houston-area imports from TPP countries totaled $22.1 billion, according to the Greater Houston Partnership.

The benefits of free trade are as tangible as a regular paycheck and a well-stocked shelf at the grocery store, and yet there are downsides that can’t be ignored. Free trade has to be fair trade. The reason Trump’s outrageous trade proposals have gotten some traction — as did the anti-trade proposals of erstwhile presidential candidate Bernie Sanders — is the neglect of those who suffer from free trade. Unlike western European nations, the U.S. hasn’t done enough to prepare businesses and workers adversely affected by the removal of trade barriers. Congress, for example, needs to reauthorize Trade Adjustment Assistance, a federal program that aids U.S. workers who have lost their jobs as a result of foreign trade. The assistance takes the form of job training, some money and other benefits, including relocation.

Free trade is no panacea, but it certainly beats the tariff walls the Republican presidential candidate proposes to erect (not to mention that other ridiculous wall he touts). This “great interior commercial emporium of Texas” has much to lose if Congress and the White House get it wrong on trade.