Remember 1992? Four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted of beating Rodney King, sparking riots citywide. Compact discs surpassed cassette tapes as the preferred medium for recorded music. The national debt was “only” $4 trillion. And presidential candidate Ross Perot predicted the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would produce “a giant sucking sound,” enabling Mexico to take thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs south of the border.

In the end, Perot lost the election. NAFTA took effect Jan. 1, 1994, transforming the United States, Canada and Mexico into a single market largely free of tariffs and other obstacles to the sale of goods from one country to the other. Twenty years later, most economists believe the agreement has worked out pretty well.