The "giant sucking sound" was a phrase used by
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
presidential candidate
Ross Perot, to describe what he believed would be the negative effects of the
North American Free Trade Agreement, which he opposed.
First usage and context
The phrase, which Perot coined during the
1992 US presidential campaign, referred to the sound of US jobs heading south for Mexico should the
free-trade agreement
A free-trade agreement (FTA) or treaty is an agreement according to international law to form a free-trade area between the cooperating states. There are two types of trade agreements: bilateral and multilateral. Bilateral trade agreements occur ...
go into effect.
In the second 1992 Presidential Debate, Ross Perot argued:
We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It's pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, ... have no health care—that's the most expensive single element in making a car— have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a ''giant sucking sound'' going south.
... when exico'sjobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it's leveled again. But in the meantime, you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals.
Perot ultimately lost the election, and the winner,
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
, supported NAFTA, which went into effect on January 1, 1994.
Legacy
The phrase has since come into general use to describe any situation involving loss of jobs, or fear of a loss of jobs, particularly by one nation to a rival. Examples include:
* A
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
representative spoke of worrying "about the giant sucking sound from Eastern Europe;"
*
Thomas Friedman
Thomas Loren Friedman (; born July 20, 1953) is an American political commentator and author. He is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who is a weekly columnist for ''The New York Times''. He has written extensively on foreign affairs, global ...
opined that "the
Mexicans ... are hearing 'the giant sucking sound' in stereo these days—from
China in one ear and
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
in the other.
* Columnist
Joe Sharkey
Joe Sharkey (born October 15, 1946) is an American author and former columnist for ''The New York Times.'' His columns focused mostly on business travel, while his non-fiction books focus on criminality. Sharkey also co-authored a novel. He has b ...
used the phrase "That Giant Sucking Sound" to introduce a comment about a 34% slump in employment in the US
airline industry
An airline is a company that provides air transport services for traveling passengers and freight. Airlines use aircraft to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for codeshare agreements, in whic ...
.
* US
Congressman Steve LaTourette (
R-
OH 14) invoked the catchphrase while criticizing the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) (), nicknamed the Recovery Act, was a stimulus package enacted by the 111th U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in February 2009. Developed in response to the Gr ...
: "Well, today there's another sucking sound going on in
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
And that's the tightening of sphincters on both ends of
Pennsylvania Avenue
Pennsylvania Avenue is a diagonal street in Washington, D.C., and Prince George's County, Maryland, that connects the White House and the United States Capitol and then crosses the city to Maryland. In Maryland it is also Maryland Route 4 (MD 4 ...
as people are having to explain who put into the stimulus bill this provision of law."
See also
*
Globalization
Globalization, or globalisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences), is the process of foreign relation ...
*
NAFTA's impact on US employment
*
Nearshoring
Outsourcing is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise is or could be carried out internally, i.e. in-house, and sometimes involves transferring employees and ...
*
Offshoring
*
Outsourcing
*
Ross Perot
NotesThe Commission on Presidential Debates
an
transcribed "job-sucking sound".
External links
of the third (October 19, 1992) Clinton-Bush-Perot Presidential Debate
References
{{reflist
American political catchphrases
1992 United States presidential election
Ross Perot
North American Free Trade Agreement
Protectionism in the United States