Analyzing the experience of Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 'Lessons from NAFTA' aims to provide guidance to Latin American and Caribbean countries considering free trade agreements with the United States. The authors conclude that the treaty raised external trade and foreign investment inflows and had a modest effect on Mexico's average income per person. It is likely that the treaty also helped achieve a modest reduction in poverty and an improvement in job quality. This book will be of interest to scholars and policymakers interested in international trade and development.

"Many of the papers included in this volume were first presented and discussed in the Spring of 2000 at a conference on lessons from the NAFTA for the FTAA"--Pref.

'Free Trade and the Environment' examines the impact of international economic integration on the environment, taking as a case study the experience of Mexico, as it transformed itself from one of the most closed economies in the world to one of the mostopen.

“A sprightly and clear-eyed testimonial to the value of globalization” (The Wall Street Journal) as seen through six surprising everyday goods—the taco salad, the Honda Odyssey, the banana, the iPhone, the college degree, and the blockbuster HBO series Game of Thrones. Trade allows us to sell what we produce at home and purchase what we don’t. It lowers prices and gives us greater variety and innovation. Yet understanding our place in the global trade network is rarely simple. Trade has become an easy excuse for struggling economies, a scapegoat for our failures to adapt to a changing world, and—for many Americans on both the right and the left—nothing short of a four-letter word. But as Fred P. Hochberg reminds us, trade is easier to understand than we commonly think. In Trade Is Not a Four-Letter Word, you’ll learn how NAFTA became a populist punching bag on both sides of the aisle. You’ll learn how Americans can avoid the grim specter of the $10 banana. And you’ll finally discover the truth about whether or not, as President Trump has famously tweeted, “trade wars are good and easy to win.” (Spoiler alert—they aren’t.) Hochberg debunks common trade myths by pulling back the curtain on six everyday products, each with a surprising story to tell: the taco salad, the Honda Odyssey, the banana, the iPhone, the college degree, and the smash hit HBO series Game of Thrones. Behind these six examples are stories that help explain not only how trade has shaped our lives so far but also how we can use trade to build a better future for our own families, for America, and for the world. Trade Is Not a Four-Letter Word is the antidote to today’s acronym-laden trade jargon pitched to voters with simple promises that rarely play out so one-dimensionally. Packed with colorful examples and highly digestible explanations, Trade Is Not a Four-Letter Word is “an accessible, necessary book that will increase our understanding of trade and economic policies and the ways in which they impact our daily lives” (Library Journal, starred review).

From NAFTA to NATO, from the WTO to the WHO, a vast array of international regimes manages an astounding number of regional and global problems. Yet the dynamics of these enormously influential bodies are barely understood. Scholars have scrutinized international regimes, but that scrutiny has been narrowly focused on questions of regime formation and regime compliance. Remarkably little attention has been paid to the crucial question of how regimes sustain themselves and evolve. This pioneering work sets about correcting that neglect. As its title suggests, Getting It Done explores how international regimes accomplish their goals--goals that constantly shift as problems change and the power of member-states shifts. In a series of conceptually bold opening chapters, the volume editors emphasize that successful evolution depends above all on a process of continuous negotiation--domestic as well as international--in which norms, principles, and rules are modified as circumstances and interests change. The second part of the volume takes this framework and applies it to four case studies, two regional, two global. Each case study presents the aims, achievements, and structure of a regime and demonstrates how it adjusts its course through negotiation. A final chapter draws both theoretical and practical lessons for the future.

A portrait of the CEC notes its establishment as the first international organization created to address "trade and the environment" issues, discussing such topics as the unprecedented resources and opportunities available within North America and what the agency can teach mainstream society about environmental protection and economic integration. (Politics & Government)

The United States – Mexico – Canada Agreement (USMCA) was signed on November 30, 2018 and aims to replace and modernize the North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This paper uses a global, multisector, computable-general-equilibrium model to provide an analytical assessment of five key provisions in the new agreement, including tighter rules of origin in the automotive, textiles and apparel sectors, more liberalized agricultural trade, and other trade facilitation measures. The results show that together these provisions would adversely affect trade in the automotive, textiles and apparel sectors, while generating modest aggregate gains in terms of welfare, mostly driven by improved goods market access, with a negligible effect on real GDP. The welfare benefits from USMCA would be greatly enhanced with the elimination of U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada and Mexico and the elimination of the Canadian and Mexican import surtaxes imposed after the U.S. tariffs were put in place.