scholarly journals The Rebranded NAFTA: Will the USMCA Achieve the Goals of the Trump Administration for North American Trade?

Norteamérica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Blecker

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (usmca) was the product of a renegotiation of the former North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta) that was intended by the Trump administration to “put America first.” This article analyzes the most important new provisions in the usmca that that administration believed would inhibit foreign investment in Mexico and reverse the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Some of the new provisions represent improvements over nafta, especially the limitations on investor-state dispute settlement and strengthened protections for labor rights. However, the new requirements for automobile production are likely    to backfire by making North American automotive production more expensive and less competitive. On the whole, the formation of the usmca probably enhanced, rather than lessened, the confidence of foreign investors in the Mexican economy. However, the agreement is unlikely to bring about large gains in U.S. manufacturing employment or to boost the long-run growth of the Mexican economy.

2019 ◽  
Vol 113 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-159 ◽  

A twenty-four-year-old agreement was reborn on October 1, 2018, when President Trump announced that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had been successfully renegotiated. The deal came after an arduous, year-long negotiation process that almost left Canada behind. As one indicator of its contentiousness, the deal lacks an agreed-upon name, but the United States is referring to it as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). It keeps some key NAFTA provisions mostly the same, including with respect to state-to-state dispute resolution, but eliminates, modifies, and adds other provisions. Among the changes: investor-state dispute settlement has been eliminated as between the United States and Canada; rules of origin for automobiles and rules for U.S. dairy products have been modified; and new provisions address labor protections, intellectual property rights, rights for indigenous persons, rules for trade negotiations with non-market countries, and the agreement's termination. The agreement was formally signed by the leaders of all three countries on November 30, 3018. It must be approved through the domestic ratification procedures of the three countries before it enters into force.


2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (4) ◽  
pp. 772-775

On November 30, 2018, Canada, Mexico, and the United States signed an agreement renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). By the spring of 2020, all three countries had approved this agreement—known in the United States as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)—through their respective domestic ratification processes. The USMCA entered into force on July 1, 2020, amid extended U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada border restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On August 6, 2020, President Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian aluminum—tariffs that his administration had previously put in place in 2018 but had removed in 2019 in order to smooth the USMCA's path to ratification.


2020 ◽  
pp. 26-39
Author(s):  
Marcos Noé Maya Martínez

In Mexican agriculture there are branches and regions that have benefited from the trade liberalization and economic integration under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but there are sectors, essentially those of basic grains that have been affected by liberalization, which exacerbates the country's food dependence. To understand the trends already in the framework of the United States, Mexico and Canada Agreement (USMCA) a projection (extrapolation) of the next 11 years will be made, based on the behavior already analyzed.


Author(s):  
J. ANTHONY VANDUZER ◽  
MELANIE MALLET

Abstract Canadian commitments under trade and investment treaties have been an ongoing concern for Indigenous peoples. The Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) is the first Canadian treaty to include a general exception for measures that a party state “deems necessary to fulfill its legal obligations to [I]ndigenous peoples.” This exception is likely to afford Canada broad, but not unlimited, discretion to determine what its legal obligations to Indigenous peoples require. There is a residual risk that Canada’s reliance on the exception could be challenged through the CUSMA dispute settlement process. A CUSMA panel would not have the expertise necessary to decide inevitably complex questions related to what Canada’s legal obligations to Indigenous peoples require. While state-to-state cases under the North American Free Trade Agreement have been rare, a CUSMA panel adjudication regarding the Indigenous general exception risks damaging consequences for Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples.


2018 ◽  
Vol 112 (3) ◽  
pp. 510-513 ◽  

Consistent with his approach on the campaign trail, President Trump has demonstrated a continued interest in revamping U.S. trade agreements. By the late spring of 2018, the Trump administration had negotiated modest changes to the United States-Republic of Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) in favor of U.S. interests. It had yet to reach any final agreement with regard to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), despite the expiration of an initial deadline that was designed to ensure adequate time for a vote on the negotiated agreement by the present Congress. To ease the passage of future trade deals, Trump has triggered the three-year extension of a process that provides expedited congressional consideration of negotiated trade agreements.


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