Nafta Research Paper

The North American Free Trade Agreement was implemented on January 1, 1994. Its purpose was to remove tariff barriers between Canada, the United States and Mexico. The Agreement includes two supplemental agreements on environmental and labor issues that address cooperative efforts to reconcile policies and procedures for dispute resolution between the member countries. NAFTA was preceded by an agreement between the United States and Canada entitled the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, which was enacted on January 1, 1989, but has now been superseded by the NAFTA. The NAFTA initialing ceremony in October 1992.NAFTA called for immediately eliminating duties on half of all U.S. goods shipped to Mexico and gradually phasing out other tariffs
over a period of about 14 years. Restrictions were to be removed from many categories, including motor vehicles and automotive parts, computers, textiles, and agriculture. The treaty also protected intellectual property rights and outlined the removal of restrictions on investment among the three countries. Provisions regarding worker and environmental protection were added later as a result of supplemental agreements signed in 1993.This agreement was an expansion of the earlier Canada U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 1989. Unlike the European Union, NAFTA does not create a set of supranational governmental bodies, or does it create a body of law which is superior to national law. As an international agreement, is very similar to a treaty Under United States law it is classed as a congressional-executive agreement. The agreement was pursued by the conservative governments in the US and Canada. In Canada, the Government was led by Brian Mulroney of the Progressive
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Conservative Party of Canada. The Canadian government worked aggressively with Republican President George H. W. Bush to create and sign the agreement. There was considerable opposition on both sides of the border, and the Clinton administration made passage of the agreement its major legislative initiative in 1993. After intense political debate and the negotiation of several side agreements, the House passed NAFTA by 234-200, and the Senate passed it by 61-38. Some opposition persists to the present day. Recently in Canada, labour unions have removed their objections to the agreement from their platforms. Since NAFTA was signed, it has been difficult to analyze its macroeconomic effects due to the large number of other variables in the global economy. Various economic studies have generally indicated that rather than creating an actual increased trade, NAFTA has caused trade diversion, in which the NAFTA members now import more from each other at the expense of other countries worldwide. Some economists argue that NAFTA has increased concentration of wealth in both Mexico and the United States. In Canada a large amount of the opposition to NAFTA comes from fears over the possible effects of various clauses and articles of the treaty. For example if something is sold even once as a commodity, the government cannot stop its sale in the future. This of course applies to the water from Canada's Great Lakes and rivers, fueling fears over the possible destruction of Canadian ecosystems and Canada's water supply. Other fears come from the effects NAFTA has had on
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Canadian law making, in 1996 an American company brought a toxin damaging to the nerve system known as MMT into Canada.
The Canadian government sued the company, but was forced to drop the charges due to the agreement which prevents governments from doing harm to foreign companies. Instead the U.S. company charged the elected government of Canada for enforcing a law aimed at protecting Canadians. These issues, among others as well as fears about the rellocation of jobs have created opposition to NAFTA. Most opponents such as the New Democratic Party support the renegotiation of the treaty, while others such as former Progressive Conservative leadership candidate David Orchard support Canada withdrawing from the agreement altogether. Despite this many Canadian politicians have made peace with the agreement, including most of the governing Liberal Party of Canada, which campaigned in the 1993 election to renegotiate the teaty but then took no steps to do so and even signed an extension of the Free Trade Agreement in 1994. From the perspective of North American consumers, one of the effects of NAFTA has been the significant increase in bilingual or even trilingual labeling on products, for simultaneous distribution through retailers in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico in French, English, and
Spanish.