NAFTA at 20

2015 ◽  
pp. 41-52
Author(s):  
E. Komkova
Keyword(s):  
Free Trade ◽  
North American ◽  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Export Market ◽  
The North ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Trade And Investment

2014 marked the 20th anniversary of the entry into force of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which created the world’s largest free trade area. Now it links 470 million people producing more than 19 trillion USD worth of goods and services. The article addresses five issues: the international importance of NAFTA; the economic transformation that has occurred in the USA, Canada and Mexico since the advent of the NAFTA; a “thought experiment” on what American, Canadian and Mexican performance might have been without the NAFTA; the detrimental effect of 9/11 on the North American economic integration; and what’s next? At the time of its signing, NAFTA in many ways was considered a “gold standard” in terms of international free trade agreements. For the first time ever a free trade agreement brought together both developed and developing countries. It also broadened the scope of traditional FTAs by embracing services, foreign investments and property rights, and recognized the importance of workers' and environmental rights and issues. In terms of trade and investment NAFTA has been an undisputed success. Canada ranks as the United States’ largest export market, while Mexico is its second-largest export market. Today – thanks to NAFTA – North Americans not only sell more goods to one another, they also make more things together. For every dollar of goods that Canada and Mexico export to the USA, there are 25 cents’ worth of US inputs into Canadian goods and 40 cents’ worth into Mexican ones. Regardless of the impressive economic record, NAFTA has its critics. The agreement has not underwent a major update since its inception in 1994, i.e. prior to the rise of electronic commerce and, digital services, advanced manufacturing and many other innovative features of the global economy. As far as there is no political appetite to update NAFTA directly, indirect route is a subject of wide speculation. Canada, the USA and Mexico are negotiating partners to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and any benefits conferred by the TPP that go further than NAFTA would take precedence. It is assumed that the TPP should help to modernize NAFTA commitments and upgrade the North American trade and investment.

Neoliberalism and Counterinsurgency

Colombia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Mahoney
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Latin American ◽  
North American ◽  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
The United States ◽  
The North ◽  
Trade Promotion ◽  
The U.S

How did the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement come about? The officially named “U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement” was the stepchild of a rancorous hemispheric divorce between the United States and five Latin American governments over the proposal to extend the North American Free Trade Agreement...

Mexican Comic Books and NAFTA

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Free Trade ◽  
North American ◽  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
The United States ◽  
The North ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
Production And Consumption

Mexican comic books are a cultural product whose development is tied to the history of the modern Mexican state. The consolidation of the state in the aftermath of the armed conflict period of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) shaped the conditions for the emergence of a domestic industry and market for comics, and in particular for comic books, alongside other important cultural industries such as radio, film, and television, through state supports for and controls over the nation’s culture industries. In the late 20th century, the neoliberal character of the Mexican state—for which official policy has centered on privatization of state economic enterprises, the reduction of public subsidies for goods and services, and the elimination of import tariffs—subsequently reshaped the conditions for production and consumption of the nation’s sequential art. The term “comics” is applied to graphic narrative generally, which in turn is defined by the sequential use of images, usually in combination with language, in order to tell some kind of story. Comics are therefore a broad category of cultural production that includes newspaper strips, comic books, graphic novels, fotonovelas (comprising photographs in series with inserted dialogue text), and, more recently, webcomics. Comics are a cultural commodity the production and distribution of which are affected by changes in public supports, as well as by governmental controls over comics content. In the period of institutional consolidation that followed the armed phased of the Mexican Revolution, government supports were provided principally through the subsidizing of newsprint and the implementation of national literacy campaigns. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—a tri-national trade liberalization regime signed by Mexico, Canada, and the United States and implemented on January 1, 1994—significantly altered the circumstances of comics in Mexico, in terms of both the economic conditions for comics production and readership, and the political environment and public discourses addressed and communicated through Mexican comics art. The most direct impact on comics production came through the Mexican state’s retreat from control of the paper supply under the terms of NAFTA. Because paper is a key productive input, changes in paper cost and availability had the largest impact on the cost of long-form or sustained graphic narratives, such as comic books. As a result, the NAFTA period (1994 to present) is marked by the emergence of the Mexican graphic novel and of webcomics. Both of these cultural forms are based on a reorganization of the economics of comic-book production. Comics production and consumption are therefore implicated in neoliberal policy constructs such as the North American Free Trade agreement, despite not being an explicit category of economic activity addressed by the treaty.

The North American Free Trade Agreement: An ecological-economic synthesis for the United States and Mexico

1994 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward B. DeBellevue ◽  
Eric Hitzel ◽  
Kenneth Cline ◽  
Jorge A. Benitez ◽  
Julia Ramos-Miranda ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
North American ◽  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ecological Economic ◽  
The North

North American Free Trade Agreement Truck Highway Corridors: U.S.-Mexican Truck Rivers of Trade

1998 ◽  
Vol 1613 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. McCray
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
North American ◽  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Advocacy Groups ◽  
The North ◽  
Federal Highway ◽  
The Impact

The dramatic growth in trade between the United States and Mexico from $12.39 billion to $56.8 billion of U.S. exports and $17.56 billion to $73 billion of U.S. imports between 1977 and 1996 and the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have focused attention on the impact that the truck-transported portion of this trade has on U.S. highways. State and federal highway administrators are concerned with the planning implications this additional unexpected traffic may have on the transportation infrastructure. Public advocacy groups want additional highway funds to promote one NAFTA highway corridor over others in an effort to stimulate additional economic development. Most of these groups advocate a north-south route through the United States between Canada and Mexico that follows the alignment of an existing federal highway number. Research conducted by the U.S. government under the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act has failed to define NAFTA highway corridors adequately, leaving policy makers with little concrete information with which to combat the rhetoric of the trade highway corridor advocacy groups. A report is provided on research critical to the needs of both highway administrators and corridor advocacy groups, namely, the location of U.S.-Mexican trade highway corridors and the trade truck density along these corridors.

scholarly journals Academic Free Trade? One Canadian's View of the MLA

PMLA ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Hutcheon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
North American ◽  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Red Maple ◽  
The North

In 1988, in the midst of the often acrimonious debates about the North American Free Trade Agreement, a button began to appear on Canadian lapels. It featured a section of the Stars and Stripes with a red maple leaf in the place of one star, and a caption read, “No, eh.” Through this image, the anti-free-trade side offered parodic resistance to what it saw as the assimilation—not to say wholesale economic engulfing—of Canada by the United States. Typically self-deprecatory, Canadian humor demanded that the rejection be couched in a gentle mocking of the national verbal tic: eh? is the terser but less elegant Canadian version of the French n'est-ce pas? and the German nicht wahr? In some ways the intellectual equivalent of NAFTA, the MLA is much older than the economic institution and somewhat less controversial. Nevertheless, it too is not unproblematic for Canadians, and to see why and how, one needs to understand something of the political and cultural relations between a very small and a very large nation when they adjoin.

scholarly journals The Unsettled Business: Should Antidumping Laws be Replaced by Competition (Antitrust) Law under Free Trade

1994 ◽  
pp. 722
Author(s):  
Christopher Kent
Keyword(s):  
Free Trade ◽  
North American ◽  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
The North ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Antidumping Law ◽  
Antidumping Laws

Some academics conclude that antidumping laws are no longer necessary in the era of the North American Free Trade Agreement and can be replaced by competition (antitrust) laws. However, the author argues that Canada and the United States have not achieved the degree of free trade necessary to eliminate the need for antidumping law. The article begins by providing an in depth analysis of the operation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) before examining the Canadian and American approaches to antidumping law. Then, using the writings and concepts of Jacob Viner, the author demonstrates that non-predatory, intermittent dumping may continue to occur under the NAFTA, thus necessitating the maintenance of antidumping law in a modified form. The author also submits that existing bodies of competition law could not fill the void created by a repeal of the antidumping laws, primarily because of the fundamental differences which exist between Canadian and American approaches to antitrust law. In order to do so, a significant amount of American material is also examined.

“All Our Kids Get Better Jobs Tomorrow”: The North American Free Trade Agreement in The New York Times

2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Michael Goss
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
North American ◽  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
The United States ◽  
The New York Times ◽  
The North ◽  
Narrative Forms

This investigation examines over 300 articles in The New York Times from 1993 that concern the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In constructing a critical analysis of The Times's discourse on NAFTA, I begin with an overview of the factors that impact on contemporary media-government relations in the United States (e.g., “information subsidy,” stereotyped narrative forms into which news accounts are typically organized). Thereafter, I demonstrate how the private sector's and Clinton government's emphatic support for the agreement was regularly insinuated into The Times's coverage. Despite “legitimate controversy” that surrounded NAFTA, The Times's sourcing patterns distinctly shaded toward pro-NAFTA sources. Moreover, the Clinton government's “market/democracy” and “economic invasion” appeals for NAFTA became prominent storylines in The Times despite their implausibility. Conversely, The Times's treatment of the NAFTA opposition (most particularly, the opposition of unions and Ross Perot) was harsh and encased within personalized narratives that skirted away from substantive analysis. Given the stakes involved in this complex, high profile, and consequential issue, I conclude by theorizing what The Times's NAFTA discourse implies about journalism and U.S. democracy.

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