Canada-United States agricultural trade under the shadow of NAFTA: liberalization, conflicts and challenges

This article investigates the ability for regional trade agreements (RTAs) to push forward agricultural liberalization. Our study of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) demonstrates that RTAs alone cannot overcome the main problems related to protectionism in the agricultural sector. RTAs can, under certain conditions, increase market access but have a limited capacity to deal with export subsidies and domestic support. Our data shows that NAFTA has improved market access for agricultural products between Canada and the United States, and that internal agricultural trade between the two countries has grown at a faster rate than with the rest of the world. Yet, in the context of the recent United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), many challenges remain.