Nafta At 20 Overviews And Trade Effects By Villarreal...

In the article â€Å"NAFTA at 20: Overviews and Trade Effects† by Villarreal and Fergusson, we are given and account of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Specifically, the article is broken down into four main sections. They are: trade liberalization before the implementation of NAFTA, an overview of NAFTA provisions, trade trends and economic effects, and policy considerations respectively. In each of these sections, the article discusses in detail how what NAFTA is and how it has affected the US, Canadian, and Mexican economies. Therefore, let us briefly examine NAFTA. NAFTA has been in effect since January 1, 1994 and is of continued importance because of the importance of Canada and Mexico as trading partners and due to the†¦show more content†¦The most significant of changes took place in the following industries: textiles and apparel, agriculture, and automotive industries. For instance, NAFTA, over a 10-year period, phased out all duties on both textile and apparel goods while for the automotive industry NAFTA phased out the restrictive auto decree imposed by Mexico. As for the agriculture industry, there were separate bilateral undertaking. One was between Canada and Mexico and one between the U.S. and Mexico. The latter eliminated many of the non-tariff barriers by imposing either ordinary tariffs or by converting to tariff-rate quotas with some tariffs being phased out. Now NAFTA also removed significant investment barriers. Apart from this, it ensured basic protections and established a mechanism for settling disputes between the country and investors. The agreement also extended to protect intellectual property such as protecting patents and copyrights, and trademarks and trade secrets Finally, NAFTA established dispute settlement procedures and government procurement. The purpose of these were to resolve disputes that may arise from antidumping and countervailing duty determinations and to open up, on a nondiscriminatory basis, government procurement to suppliers from other NAFTA countries. Now that we are familiar with some of the NAFTA provisions, let us briefly examine some of the trade trends and economic effects. While it is extremely