It's hard to fathom one issue on which both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton agree, but trade agreements have become the piñata of choice for beating by both parties in the 2016 presidential race.
Both campaigns have tapped into voter anger over U.S. job losses and have placed blame solely on our "evil" trade partners. The most recent swipe was a memo released by the Trump camp discussing job losses in Pennsylvania which they attributed to NAFTA and the South Korea trade agreement.
The numbers are packaged to be as scary as possible to voters, but any economist will tell you that statistics can be used to spin many different compelling stories. And there is more than one factor at work here.
Jobs in U.S. manufacturing have been declining since long before NAFTA or the South Korea agreement. As China, India, and other developing nations started to grow and became more competitive, we started losing ground in certain sectors.
However, even the sectors which did not suffer production losses, showed a decrease in their employment. The major factor behind this is technology. As we adopt technology throughout the production process (some prefer the word "automation"), the demand for labor in some sectors goes down. Look no further than your neighborhood retail stores, where checkout counters are being replaced one-by-one with self-checkout options.
In fact, the 2016 Economic Report of the President has a special section on the possible effects of automation on workers. Their calculations indicate that lower wage jobs, such as those paying less than 20 dollars per hour, are more likely to be automated (with a probability of automation of more than 80 percent).