NAFTA: The North American Common Market

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an international agreement between Canada, America and Mexico. This agreement took effect in January 1994 and was signed by President Bill Clinton. This agreement brought great changes in trade volumes and open new opportunities for millions of labours. Later, in January 2008 according to the schedule all duties and restrictions were eliminated. About 45,000 tariffs were eliminated in 1994 and only 3000 were left until 1999.

Other criticisms of NAFTA include increased pollution and worker abuse. But the full impact of NAFTA—for better or for worse—is tough to evaluate because so many other variables affect all three economies.

The effects of NAFTA on Mexico, U.S, and their economic situation have impacts on political interests. There was main objective of Mexico in pursuing free trade area with the United States or with other countries to stabilize the Mexican economy in sustainable way and promote economic development by attracting huge foreign direct investment means of increasing exports, in house manufacturing and creating jobs. NAFTA would improve investor confidence in Mexico has directly impact to increase export diversification, create job market increase wage rates, reduce poverty, improve standard of living, quality and economic growth

“It is important to realize that NAFTA is not the opening up of Mexico,” said Jonathan Heath, a Mexico City economist. “The opening up of Mexico had occurred before NAFTA. NAFTA is the consolidation of that opening up and what it really represents is the locking in of trade liberalization for Mexico.”

NAFTA took effect on January 1, 1994 with the culmination of all quota and tariff repeals on January 1, 2008. This agreement was designed to expand trade between Canada, Mexico, and the United States by reducing restrictions imposed by tariffs and encouraging foreign direct investment in the developing economies.

The North American Free Trade Agreement, commonly known as the NAFTA, is a trade agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico launched to enable North America to become more competitive in the global marketplace (Amadeo, 2011). The NAFTA is regarded as “one of the most successful trade agreements in history” for its impact on increases in agricultural trade and investment among the three contracting nations (North American Free Trade Agreement, 2011). Supporters and opponents of the NAFTA have argued the effects of the agreement on participating nations since its inception; yet, close examination proves that NAFTA has had a relatively positive impact on the economies of the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Secondly, NAFTA helped create many jobs for Canadians. Statistics Canada shows that about 1 out of 5 jobs are linked to international trade. The agreement overall has helped produce fairly “around 1.8 million new jobs in its first 5 years.” With increasing trade in Canada, it created the demand for more people to do the work that is brought onto the country because more people getting employed, means more money they have to spend on goods that are imported from other countries. For Canadian companies that handle the trade sector, they had to hire people that were able to work because more products, meant more work which created more jobs. The cycle continued to bloom in the economy. “NAFTA also increased employment in different sectors from

Since its creation in 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is a major issue of debate in the United States. The most important issue with NAFTA is how the agreement affects the U.S. economy. NAFTA has had a broad impact on the U.S. economy through creative destruction, globalization, job restructuring, and isolationism. All of these components have had both positive and negative influences on the U.S. economy. Creative destruction creates new jobs to replace the ones that were originally ended by NAFTA, globalization expands ideas, products, and business, but also causes the U.S. to lose money, job reconstruction recreates jobs to fit the functions of NAFTA and sometimes causes workers to lose their original jobs, and isolation

In the 1980 's and 90 's or anytime before or after there was never any need for NAFTA. The U.S., Mexico, and Canada had been trading goods partners since before the United States even existed. Strip away all the party rhetoric and you 'll find the true goal of NAFTA was to free American corporations from Unions and more importantly (To Clinton and Wall Street) U.S. laws that workers, cost of labor, union rules and regulations and the environment regulations that added to the

Overall though, NAFTA has accomplished some goals, but has drastically failed in others (Weintraub). Even though there have been some benefits from the North American Free Trade Agreement, the loss of jobs, increase in illegal immigration, negative environmental impact, and change in the job markets in the USA and Canada have been very detrimental to the two nations, often at the expense of Mexico’s rapid industrialization. Approximately, 1,015,291 US jobs have been lost directly because of NAFTA since Mexico is a region with a lower cost of operation so the jobs market can’t compete with Mexico (Anderson and Bourassa). Since the United States has monopolized the food industry, for the most part, in North America, they have displaced around 9.3 million Mexican farmers that have either left for the city or illegally immigrated to the United States (Anderson and Bourassa). Environmental impacts have been negative in regions such as the “maquiladora zone”, which is along the Mexican-American border because of the increase in factories in the area, which has caused an increased in population and overall traffic and urban expansion, which has killed the desert environment of the region (Anderson and

The North american Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), established in 1994, is an economic agreement, whose primary goal is to eliminate subsidies and trade barriers for national industries between The United states, Mexico, and Canada. The organizational structure of NAFTA was originally intended to have more advantages and positive outcomes, than negative effects on these three countries, but many factors have caused NAFTA to lean more towards the negative impacts it has had.   Although the organization undoubtedly succeeded their main goals, controversy has come up about how NAFTA has impacted the U.S and Canada negatively, regarding employment and wages. Industries are facing harmful disturbances as they lose market shares, because of competition

One of the provisions in the NAFTA agreement that has benefitted the US is in the automotive industry. Before the NAFTA agreement, the US imported a lot of vehicles from Japan, and other countries. Also, the US had to look for parts (either for first-time assembly or replacements) elsewhere in the world. Mexico had an automotive industry, but it was generally limited to what it could produce and sell locally. Since many people are poor in Mexico, the cars and parts that were made there, were of low quality. Once NAFTA took place, the US was free to open up production in Mexico, where money was spent on better equipment

The agreement encouraged and facilitated the buying and establishment of enterprises in Mexico from the U.S. and Canada. Additionally, the agreement also gave more freedom to Canada and Mexico to invest in canadian banks. Restrictions on bringing profits back were also removed. Third, NAFTA supported trade in services, such as banking and finance, transportation and telecommunications. An important factor we should consider is that since there was reduced barriers to trade and services, Mexico extended temporary work permits to service providers from Canada and the United States.

The North American Free Trade Agreement or as its most commonly known NAFTA “is a comprehensive rules-based agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico”, that came into effect on January 1,1994. All three countries signed it in December of 1992; later on November of 1993 it was ratified by the United States congress. NAFTA was not only used in cutting down on tariffs between both countries but it also help deal with issues such as Transportation, Border Issues, and Environmental Issues between these two countries. NAFTA changed some tariffs immediately and within fifteen years other tariffs will fall to zero. NAFTA was not created to just lower tariffs it was also created to open protected sectors in agriculture, energy,

Benefits such as new U.S. jobs, higher wages in Mexico, a growing U.S. trade surplus