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The European Union (EU) vs the North American Free Trade Agreement

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The European Union (EU) vs the North American Free Trade Agreement

Introduction

The European Union (EU) is the organization which integrates the countries listed below, both politically and economically. It is a customs union, which is an agreement amongst a group of countries to eliminate trade barriers between them on the movement of goods, services, labor and capital, and also to establish a common external tariff on goods and services coming into the union. The EU evolved from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which was formed in 1951 as a response to the First and Second World Wars to try to ensure future peace in Europe. This became the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1965, which in turn became the European …show more content…

Indeed, the ideological foundations that gave birth to the EU were based on ensuring development and maintaining international stability, i.e., the containment of communist expansion in post World War II Europe (Hunt 1989). The Maastricht Treaty which gave birth to the EU in 1992 included considerations for joint policies in regard to military defense and citizenship.

Trading blocs could strongly affect a company's investment decision. This particular trading bloc development prompted Ford to realise it could consider Europe to be one common market rather than a collection of individual markets. In 1967, Ford changed its management structure to include its European operations under one umbrella organisation known as Ford Europe Incorporated. Its two large U.K. and German manufacturing centres remained an important dimension of the new strategy, but they were no longer considered separate, independently operating companies. Despite nationalistic tendencies on the part of the host-country management, Ford decided that, from the companies perspective, it was best to eliminate national boundaries, and a German director said, The pooling of the two companies cut the engineering bill in half for each company, provided economies of scale, with double the volume in

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