Making duct pipes for Canada. Sending automotive jobs to Mexico.
Pittsburgh has seen both sides of NAFTA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Ray Yeager swelled with pride as he strolled through his company’s 250,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Monongahela.
Machines rhythmically pounded sheet metal into complex shapes and various sizes; conveyors dropped finished pieces into cardboard boxes; automatic mechanical arms placed boxes onto wooden pallets. A legion of workers drove forklifts to take the pallets out for shipment.
Parts made here are used in heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
It’s the type of operation that remains a distant memory for other workers in the Pittsburgh region. Kenneth Love worked for 22 years at a General Motors metal stamping plant in West Mifflin, which shuttered in 2008 after more than five decades.
“They promised us a future for our grandchildren to work there,” said Mr. Love, who retired just before the closure and became a minister and labor union activist. “It didn’t last 10 years.”
The two clashing narratives largely hinge on one plot twist that has had profound effects for American business and labor: the North American Free Trade Agreement.
It’s a fierce debate that has been revived and electrified by President Donald Trump’s decision this year to renegotiate the 1994 trade pact, which opened up the U.S. to free trade with Canada and Mexico.
As the three countries attempt to hammer out a new deal in secret, businesses and labor groups in Pittsburgh are on the edge of their seats. The unpredictability of what the Trump administration will propose — ranging from leaving controversial provisions intact to assessing tariffs on imports to pulling out of the trade pact altogether — seems to have all sides prepared for the worst in vastly different ways.
While labor groups generally want the agreement scaled back or gone, manufacturers fear losing established business partners.
NAFTA opened up roughly $3 million in annual sales for Mr. Yeager’s DMI Companies, a Charleroi-based manufacturer of products used in HVAC systems for commercial buildings like hospitals, schools and apartment complexes.
Employing about 450 workers, the company exports directly to Canada and sells to a supplier in Texas that ships DMI materials for use in Mexico’s buildings.
“I’m a big believer in free trade,” Mr. Yeager said. He worries that if the U.S. were to put strict tariffs on imports of, say, Canadian softwood lumber, Canada could impose retaliatory tariffs on his products.
“Then it becomes more of a political issue than an economic debate,” he said. “If there are no tariffs or quotas, then it’s supply and demand, and the most efficient manufacturers are going to survive.”
The U.S. currently has 14 free trade agreements in effect with