The "giant sucking sound" was United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 Presidential candidate Ross Perot

Ross Perot

Henry Ross Perot is a U.S. businessman best known for running for President of the United States in 1992 and 1996. Perot founded Electronic Data Systems in 1962, sold the company to General Motors in 1984, and founded Perot Systems in 1988...

's colorful phrase for what he believed would be the negative effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement

North American Free Trade Agreement

The North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA is an agreement signed by the governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. It superseded the Canada – United States Free Trade Agreement...

 (NAFTA), which he opposed.

History

The phrase, coined during the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign, referred to the sound of U.S. jobs heading south for Mexico should the proposed free-trade agreement

Free trade area

A free trade area is a trade bloc whose member countries have signed a free trade agreement , which eliminates tariffs, import quotas, and preferences on most goods and services traded between them. If people are also free to move between the countries, in addition to FTA, it would also be...

 go into effect.

Perot ultimately lost the election, and the winner, Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

, supported NAFTA, which went into effect on January 1, 1994.

Derivations

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. For example:

• A European Union representative spoke of worrying "about the giant sucking sound from Eastern Europe;"
• An op-ed writer opined that "the Mexicans... are hearing 'the giant sucking sound' in stereo these days—from China in one ear and India in the other.
• A columnist used the phrase "That Giant Sucking Sound" to introduce a comment about a 34% slump in employment in the U.S. airline industry.
• Congressman Steve LaTourette
  Steve LaTourette
  Steven C. "Steve" LaTourette is the U.S. House of Representative for , serving since 1995. He is a member of the Republican Party.-Early life, education and career:...
  
   (R-OH 14) invoked the catchphrase while criticizing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
  American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, abbreviated ARRA and commonly referred to as the Stimulus or The Recovery Act, is an economic stimulus package enacted by the 111th United States Congress in February 2009 and signed into law on February 17, 2009, by President Barack Obama.To...
  
  : "Well, today there's another sucking sound going on in Washington, D.C. And that's the tightening of sphincters on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue as people are having to explain who put into the stimulus bill this provision of law."

See also

• Globalization
  Globalization
  Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
  
  
• List of political catch phrases
• NAFTA's impact on US employment
• Nearshoring
  Nearshoring
  Nearshoring is "the transfer of business or IT processes to companies in a nearby country, often sharing a border with your own country", where both parties expect to benefit from one or more of the following dimensions of proximity: geographic, temporal , cultural, linguistic, economic, political,...
  
  
• Offshoring
  Offshoring
  Offshoring describes the relocation by a company of a business process from one country to another—typically an operational process, such as manufacturing, or supporting processes, such as accounting. Even state governments employ offshoring...
  
  
• Outsourcing
  Outsourcing
  Outsourcing is the process of contracting a business function to someone else.-Overview:The term outsourcing is used inconsistently but usually involves the contracting out of a business function - commonly one previously performed in-house - to an external provider...
  
  

External links

• The New York Times transcript of the second (October 15, 1992) Clinton-Bush-Perot Presidential Debate
  • The Commission on Presidential Debates and PBS transcribed "job-sucking sound"
• The Commission on Presidential Debates transcript of the third (October 19, 1992) Clinton-Bush-Perot Presidential Debate