NAFTA's army: Free trade and US military enlistment

Abstract

I argue that international trade increases military enlistment in the United States. Trade-related job losses reduce economic opportunities in local labor markets, and the government responds by increasingmilitary recruitment efforts in those counties. This dynamic challenges conventional accounts of globalization, which tend to overlook the local impact of free trade and only examine the traditional welfare policies that governments offer to compensate "trade losers." This study analyzes an original, county-level data set on army enlistment and trade-related job losses from 1996 to 2010. The results suggest that a trade shock of one thousand job losses is associated with a 33 percent increase in army enlistment in the median county. To illustrate the causal mechanisms that link free trade to army enlistment, this study also presents a case study based on original interviews in Catawba County, North Carolina, a county particularly impacted by trade liberalization.