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Mr. Gore’s assertion that “we cut down on illegal immigration,” as Nafta created better jobs in Mexico, sits uneasily alongside the fact that by the end of the Clinton administration in 2000 there were 4.5 million unauthorized immigrants from Mexico living in the United States, up from two million a decade earlier.

The prediction from Clinton administration officials that Nafta could vault Mexico into the select group of developed economies — an aspiration shared on the other side of the border too — never really came to pass.

Perhaps the most resonant of Mr. Perot’s observations, however, had to do with the broader impact of trade on American workers. “If we keep shifting our manufacturing jobs across the border and around the world and deindustrializing our country, we will not be able to defend this great country, and that is a risk we will never take,” he said.

Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist who as chief economist for the Labor Department helped prepare Mr. Gore for the debate, said Mr. Perot’s case was overstated. Not that many workers were displaced by trade at the time, the economy was creating other middle-income jobs, and those displaced had opportunities to bounce back.

What Mr. Perot said might not have been true then, but it is now, Mr. Katz said: “On substance, he was well ahead of his time.”

The “sucking sound” from Mexico was never really heard, but there certainly was one from China after it entered the World Trade Organization in 2001 — a move supported by the Clinton and Bush administrations. And the jobs the labor market is creating tend to be in the service sectors toward the bottom of the pay scale.