Claims that NAFTA increased deaths among manufacturing workers overlook a key reality: most job loss stems from productivity gains, not trade.

The New York Times recently reported on a new research paper that finds that, as summarized by the Times, “the North American Free Trade Agreement and trade competition with Mexico led to earlier deaths for American factory workers.”

Specifically, the researchers found that, from NAFTA’s launch in January 1994 through 2008, mortality increased in those “commuting zones” in the continental United States that had a disproportionately large number of workers producing manufactured goods in competition with imports from Mexico. Especially hard hit in those commuting zones were men who, in 1994, were ages 25 to 44. Losing jobs as a result of the greater freedom of Americans to purchase imports from Mexico, manufacturing workers and members of their households in these hard-hit commuting zones became more likely to commit suicide, turn to drugs or alcohol, or otherwise suffer ill health that raised their chances of going early to their graves.

In short, NAFTA was deadly because NAFTA destroyed manufacturing jobs. It’s a tiny leap from this finding to the conclusion that free trade is very likely hazardous to the health of manufacturing workers and their families. And at least one of the paper’s three authors — University of Chicago economist Matthew Notowidigdo — made this leap when he told the New York Times that his research highlights an “underappreciated cost of globalization.”

The econometrics in the paper is genuinely impressive. I assume that the finding of increased mortality is accurate. But I dispute the conclusion that this rise in mortality can legitimately be said to be the result of the freeing of trade.

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