Regional Trade Liberalization: The North American Free Trade Agreement

In the broadest sense, the creation of a free trade area in North America can be viewed as the logical culmination of a pattern of increasing commercial integration among the private sectors of the several countries constituting the region. The specific and immediate catalyst was the emergence in the early 1980s of economic problems in Canada and Mexico. Negotiating North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was the easy part of the US decisionmaking process. Assuring congressional passage of the necessary implementing legislation under the fast-track statute was a far more difficult endeavor. Symptomatic of the argument-counterargument-counter counterargument pirouette into intellectual gridlock was the issue of how to properly calculate Mexican wages. After NAFTA was signed by the three heads of state in December 1992, the ensuing preparations for congressional ratification triggered the most dramatic, emotional, expensive, and mass-marketed public debate in US trade policy history.