As textile and apparel production has been at the center of almost every major episode of industrialization since the sixteenth century, so too has it been a vanguard sector in the process of deindustrialization experienced by advanced capitalist countries beginning in the twentieth century. Thus it is no surprise that this sector would play a fascinating role in the world's first postcolonial effort at economic integration between two countries at vastly different levels of economic development. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), implemented in 1994, was expected to speed the two already ongoing trends of a rising apparel sector in Mexico and a steadily declining sector in the United States. US apparel firms would be expected to be an important contributor to Ross Perot's infamous “sucking sound” of jobs moving from the US to Mexico.