Present and discuss the success or failure, in your opinion,of the following trade agreements or arrangements: NAFTA

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NAFTA Introduction

Since the idea of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA ) first entered the broader public consciousness in the early 1990s , there has been a remarkable reorientation within business , academic , and political circles in an effort to consider and better understand the nature of the North American relationship . The 1988 free trade agreement between Canada and the United States evoked intense debate and soul searching within Canada and comparatively little interest

among Americans but that situation changed as the horizons broadened to include Mexico and likely extension into other countries of Latin America , beginning with Chile (Aggrawal , 363-372 ) By the early 1990s , Americans , along with Mexicans and Canadians , had fully entered into the dialogue . Remarkably although perhaps not surprisingly , the nature of the issues raised anxieties expressed , and ambitions to be realized through a closer trilateral relationship articulated within one country have resonated in the others . Although the alliances of foes and advocates have varied in the three countries , there have also been remarkable similarities Canadians and Mexicans have tended to be more directly engaged in a debate over models of development and strategies of dealing with their common neighbor than have Americans The NAFTA Debate

The NAFTA agreement touched on such a wide range of issues and areas including financial services , foreign investment , the auto sector textiles , agriculture , labor , and the environment in the side agreements that it should not have been surprising that it evoked strong sentiments among a variety of interest groups in the United States and Mexico although the Mexican public debate was significantly muted by the more closed nature of the political system

In the United States , the opponents of NAFTA were strange bedfellows organized and unorganized labor , environmentalists , consumer groups , the protectionist left , and the populist right of Ross Perot , variously denouncing the agreement as a big-business plot to take advantage of low Mexican wages and lax Mexican government enforcement of environmental standards and labor laws (Andrea , 54-69 ) On the protagonist side , the administration and its supporters , which included arch-conservative Rush Limbaugh and corporate scion Lee Iacocca , contended that NAFTA would expand American markets , improve environmental and labor issues along the U .S .-Mexican b , and sufficiently improve economic and labor conditions in Mexico to result in a significant reduction in Mexican immigration pressure on the United States (Peter , 44-56 The Impact of NAFTA

Given the limitations of time and space , I will touch on a select range of areas in considering the impact of NAFTA to date : industry , labor immigration , and the environment . As with other issues , continuity here is more striking than any significant departure from the past . At the time of the conclusion of NAFTA , Mexico was , and remains , the third largest trading partner of the United States after Canada and Japan although its economy was only five percent the size of the combined American and Canadian economies . In 1992 , the United States was the source...