USMCA

4 Key excerpts on "USMCA"

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  The Political Economy of Hemispheric Integration

  Responding to Globalization in the Americas

  • D. Sánchez-Ancochea, K. Shadlen, D. Sánchez-Ancochea, K. Shadlen(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Third, the rise in protectionist U.S. trade policy led business and government leaders to view with favor an arrangement that they hoped would guarantee Canada preferential and secure access to the U.S. economy. And finally, the election of a business-friendly Conservative Party government under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, as well as the shift of several Canadian provinces toward support for free trade, created the political opening necessary for the negotiation of a free trade agreement. The trade agreement was heavily contested in the so-called “free trade election” of 1988, and was actively opposed by a coalition of trade unions, women’s groups, environmentalists, and other social movements, as well as the Liberal Party of Canada. However, the Conservative Party’s victory in that election paved the way for the implementation of the agreement. Canada was less than enthusiastic about Mexico’s pursuit of its own agreement with the United States, but eventually agreed to the negotiation of a trilateral agreement in the hopes of avoiding the formation of a hub-and-spoke arrangement, with the United States dominating the region through a series of bilateral accords. The process of negotiation and signing of the NAFTA apparently signified the formal equality of the three North American partners, as each country had a seat at the table. Canada and Mexico hoped that establishing a rules-based system for the management of regional trade would diminish the historical asymmetries between the United States and its two neighbors, and restrain U.S. unilateralist behavior in the region. LAURA MACDONALD 228 Critics of NAFTA would argue that continued trade disputes, such as the one over softwood lumber, and the failure of Canadian negotiators to achieve its main objective in the negotiations, a subsidies code, demonstrate that U.S.

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  Building a Partnership

  The Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement

  • Mordechai E. Kreinin(Author)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • University of Calgary Press

    (Publisher)

  For Canada, the United States and, perhaps, Mexico, the extent of their existing regional integration, as well as the structural pressures flowing from the forces of globalization, suggest that early movement in this direction would make sense. Canada, for example, has long indicated that it would like to deepen some— but not all— aspects of NAFTA. In particular, Canadian officials have identified the rules related to trade remedies and government procurement as priority areas for attention between Canada and the United States. Mexico appears to share some of these interests, but with less conviction and urgency, largely because it has had less experience with trade agreements and with managing trade relations with the United States on the basis of such an agreement. Some U.S. officials may share these interests at an intellectual level, but so far there is little evidence that intellectual arguments can be translated into political interest. Indeed, there appears to be strong resistance. Rather, U.S. officials have expressed a preference for seeing NAFTA used as a model for expanding reforms based on the U.S. model to Latin America in such areas as intellectual property protection and investment. More importantly, the United States is showing increasing signs of being ambiguous about accepting new international trade obligations; U.S. officials remain interested in expanding U.S. rights, but is less certain about deepening U.S. obligations. To be frank, the United States— using the phrase widely to encompass not only official thinking in Washington but also academic and think-tank work around the country—is a deeply conservative country, less than willing to grasp the full implications of the new realities and opportunities. The United States tackled the so-called new issues of the 1980s, for example— issues that Jacob Viner identified as shortcomings of the GATT as far back as 1947 8 —in very conventional terms.

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  National Politics in a Global Economy

  The Domestic Sources of U.S. Trade Policy

  • Philip A. Mundo(Author)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • Georgetown University Press

    (Publisher)

  5 The North American Free Trade Agreement Congressional approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was a major achievement for the Clinton administration. With the help of congressional Republicans, a Democratic president successfully finished the task begun by his Republican predecessor of creating a sweeping free-trade area among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The political battle that preceded congressional approval of NAFTA was a bare-knuckled brawl among contestants with starkly different economic interests. The political stakes were high, as a new president sought to win a major victory, albeit in an uncomfortable alliance with the opposition party. NAFTA is partly about economics. It represents a commitment to freer trade within North America, and it is a step in the direction of global trade liberalization. From the U.S. perspective, NAFTA is also about foreign policy. It makes a great deal of sense to pursue a policy that will presumably help stabilize and enrich America's huge southern neighbor with which it shares a 1,500-mile border. Thus, the develop-ment of NAFTA, from conception to congressional approval, involved conflict over economic policy primarily, with foreign policy concerns not far below the surface. These issues exposed sharp political divisions based on intense economic interests, made all the more complicated and intractable by their foreign policy implications. The principal message of this chapter is that the complex politics of NAFTA was essentially domestic in nature. Regardless of the foreign economic and political aspects of NAFTA, the agreement had to be approved through the domestic policy process. The central role played National Politics in a Global Economy • 152 by Congress with respect to NAFTA placed the debate squarely in the domestic arena. Thus, to understand the politics of NAFTA, it is necessary to turn to the domestic policy process.

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  No Trade Is Free

  Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America's Workers

  • Robert Lighthizer(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Broadside Books

    (Publisher)

  Our solution to this problem was the sunset. The original idea was that the new agreement would have a fixed term of four years, at which point it would expire. This admittedly was an aggressive opening bid. But it allowed us to communicate to Mexico and Canada—and to the US business community—that we wanted a paradigm-changing agreement that would not only address current trade irritants but prevent the United States from ever again finding itself saddled with an unbalanced, outdated agreement and with no leverage to change it other than the costly and disruptive threat of outright withdrawal. As the proposal evolved, the term lengthened to sixteen years, and the decision about whether to extend the agreement was brought forward to year six. That means that every six years, the political leadership in each of the USMCA countries must make a decision of consequence—whether to extend the agreement for another sixteen years. And if they decide not to extend, a ten-year clock starts ticking, during which time the parties can work out any disagreements that led one or more parties to decide not to extend. That’s a generous amount of time that will prevent market disruptions but still force politicians to make difficult decisions and resist the temptation to defer maintenance on the agreement indefinitely. If the United States had insisted on a sunset provision in prior trade agreements, including NAFTA and China’s WTO-accession protocol, both the United States and the global trading system would be much stronger today.

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  Chapter 13

  USMCA

  Mexico and Canada

  NAFTA had been a failure for America. Renegotiating to a better deal was therefore high on my list of priorities. Deciding what kind of agreement we wanted was only the first step; actually negotiating it was quite another. And we didn’t have just one party to negotiate with but multiple—Mexico and Canada, of course, but also the US Congress, the private sector, organized labor, and other interested constituencies. All this would play out with the ongoing daily dramas of the Trump administration in the background—tax reform, the failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a contentious immigration policy, Charlottesville, the Mueller investigation, the United States–China trade war, and, ultimately, the first impeachment trial. The consequences of failure would have been devastating for the administration, the Republican Party, and the country. It was a fascinating challenge—but also a harrowing ordeal.

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