Although the North American Free Trade Agreement succeeded in liberalizing trade, over the 20 years since the treaty entered into force, it has failed to deepen links between the Canadian, U.S., and Mexican economies. It’s not too late to play catch-up, so policymakers should tear down the remaining barriers to complete economic integration.
In 1992, when Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney sat down with Mexican President Carlos Salinas and U.S. President George H. W. Bush to sign the North American Free Trade Agreement, free trade was still a matter of fierce national debate in Canadian politics. NAFTA was meant to build on the U.S.-Canadian free-trade agreement that Mulroney had signed at the beginning of 1988, and his support for that deal had cost his party 34 parliamentary seats in federal elections later that year, which had focused almost exclusively on the issue.