Requiem or Revival?
The Promise of North American Integration
Publication Year: 2007
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was launched amid great hopes and controversy in 1994. More than a dozen years later, progress toward economic integration has stalled. Mexico's economy remains far behind those of Canada and the United States, and such pressing issues as energy security remain unaddressed. In Requiem or Revival? scholars and policymakers from all three nations dissect NAFTA's failure to fulfill its early promise and evaluate the prospects for further integration. The authors explore the interaction between regionalism and multilateralism, the impact of the "new trade" agenda, and NAFTA's unresolved problems migration, security, and energy. Recognizing the limits of the NAFTA framework, they examine its relationship to the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas negotiations and the Doha Development Round, and they discuss various ways in which NAFTA could be revamped or improved. The result is an intriguing volume offering important insights on the future of economic integration in North America and beyond. Contributors include Chantal Blouin (North-South Institute), Theodore H. Cohn (Simon Fraser University, emeritus), I. M. Destler (University of Maryland), Charles F. Doran (Johns Hopkins UniversitySAIS), Christina Gabriel (Carleton University), Sergio Gómez Lora (IQOM, Inteligencia Comercial), Jerry Haar (Florida International University), Laura Macdonald (Carleton University), Gordon Mace (Université Laval), Isidro Morales (University of the Americas), Glauco Oliveira (University of Southern California), Antonio Ortiz Mena (CIDE), Jeffrey J. Schott (Peterson Institute for International Economics),Anne Weston (North-South Institute),Tamara Woroby (Towson University, Johns Hopkins UniversitySAIS), and Jaime Zabludovsky (Soluciones Estratégicas).
Published by: Brookings Institution Press
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
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pp. vii-viii
By 2008 the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will have met its prime objectives. At this time, some 99 percent of goods and services in those sectors covered by NAFTA will flow duty-free between Canada, Mexico, and the United States, and the explicit goals of increasing trade and foreign investment in North America will have been met. Yet, at ...
Acknowledgments
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pp. ix-x
The challenges of uniting a truly trinational set of specialists to write these essays are such that we have gathered a long list of benefactors and sponsors who warrant recognition. This project began as a two-day seminar organized by Isabel Studer at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Mexico City, which was supported generously by the ...
Abbreviations
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pp. xi-xv
Chapter 1. No Turning Back: Trade Integration and the New Development Mandate
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pp. 1-24
Since the Uruguay Round of negotiations of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1986, hemispheric and subregional trade negotiations have proliferated and have interacted with this more established multilateral venue in unpredictable ways. First was the uncharacteristic willingness of the United States to venture outside of GATT in search of bilateral ...
Part I. The North American Free Trade Area: Achievements and Limitations
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pp. 25-26
Chapter 2. Unfulfilled Promise: Economic Convergence under NAFTA
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pp. 27-52
It is estimated that around 230 subregional integration schemes have cropped up across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Western Hemisphere since 1990, but this chapter is concerned with one of the more unusual features to have emerged within the current generation of regional trade agreements (RTAs): the sweeping elimination of economic barriers between...
Chapter 3. Obstacles to Integration: NAFTA's Institutional Weakness
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pp. 53-75
When he took office in 2000 President Vicente Fox promoted the idea of a deeper integration of North America, one that would include the free transit of not only goods, services, and capital, but also labor. He also proposed establishing a U.S. $20 billion development fund equivalent to Europe’s cohesion funds to invest in, among other things, infrastructure corridors ...
Chapter 4. Trade Negotiations Among NAFTA Partners: The Future of North American Economic Integration
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pp. 76-88
North American economic integration long predates the creation of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Several of the authors whose work appears in this volume have contributed importantly to the integration process—some for longer than they would like to admit. But there’s still ...
Part II. The Hemispheric Context: From NAFTA to the Free Trade Area of the Americas
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pp. 89-90
Chapter 5. Beyond the FTAA: Perspectives for Hemispheric Integration
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pp. 106-122
It has been more than ten years since the heads of state of the thirty-four democratically elected governments in the Western Hemisphere launched negotiations for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the most ambitious foreign policy initiative the region has seen in decades. The 1994 Miami Summit of the Americas gave birth to the FTAA concept, raising ...
Chapter 6. The FTAA Stalemate: Implications for Canadian Foreign Policy
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pp. 108-123
The above declaration by the former Canadian minister for international trade attests to the profound disarray concerning the results of the November 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Ministerial Meeting held in Miami. Instead of laying the groundwork for the last stretch of a negotiation leading to a comprehensive agreement, this meeting of trade ...
Chapter 7. What Went Wrong?: Brazil, the United States, and the FTAA
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pp. 124-144
The failure to meet the deadline to establish a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by January 2005 threw this project into limbo and confirmed the lack of common objectives and unresolved rivalries between Brazil and the United States, the two main players at the regional negotiating table. At the heart of this standoff lie the U.S. determination to negotiate ...
Part III. The Global Context: The New Trade Agenda and the Doha Round
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pp. 145-146
Chapter 8. The Doha Round: Problems, Challenges, and Prospects
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pp. 147-165
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) completed the Uruguay Round, its most ambitious round of multilateral trade negotiations, in December 1993. The Uruguay Round resulted in a stronger dispute settlement system, multilateral trade rules for services and intellectual property, more multilateral trade discipline for agriculture and textiles, and ...
Chapter 9. U.S. Trade Politics During the Doha Round
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pp. 166-185
On July 24, 2006, Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), declared the Doha Development Round of global trade talks “suspended” because of the failure of the principal parties to reach agreement on agricultural trade. Then, on November 7, 2006, the domestic political context for U.S. trade was transformed as Democrats won ...
Chapter 10. Mexico in the Multilateral Trading System: A Long and Winding Road
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pp. 186-208
In the two decades since Mexico joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), it has become an important trader in Latin America, participates actively in multilateral trade negotiations, and has been one of the most dynamic participants in regional trade agreements. Currently, more than 70 percent of the country’s GDP derives from trade.1 The present situation ...
Part IV. Beyond Trade: Energy, Migration, and North American Integration
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pp. 209-210
Chapter 11. The Politics of Energy Markets in North America: Challenges and Prospects for a Continental Partnership
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pp. 211-231
With global energy prices reaching new heights since 2000, the United States has turned its attention more closely to the prospects for forging an explicit and cohesive energy policy that involves Canada and Mexico. The U.S. energy strategy up until now has bet on market mechanisms and blind faith that price incentives for Canada and Mexico will ...
Chapter 12. International Energy Security and North America
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pp. 232-246
Atendency exists among analysts of international relations to believe that an international energy crisis cannot occur through a supply disruption because such a crisis has not happened before—or at least has not happened recently. But such logic concerning the long term—namely, that oil exporters must sell their oil and therefore are not likely to disrupt supply—could in the ...
Chapter 13. North American Immigration: The Search for Positive-Sum Returns
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pp. 247-266
The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was mainly about the free flow of goods and services among the three signatories and, with the exception of visas for a limited group of professionals, did not address migration issues. Since that time, the number of people crossing Mexican, Canadian, and especially U.S. borders has increased, creating in the ...
Chapter 14. Migration and Citizenship Rights in a New North American Space
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pp. 267-288
Street protests across the United States and tense debates in the U.S. Congress have brought to the fore one of the unresolved issues of North American integration: migration. Proponents of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) argued that by bringing wealth and jobs to Mexico, NAFTA would stem the flow of undocumented workers to the United States. ...
Contributors
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pp. 289-294
Index
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pp. 295-306
E-ISBN-13: 9780815782001
E-ISBN-10: 0815782004
Page Count: 306
Publication Year: 2007
