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NAFTA | USMCA

North America Free Trade Agreement | US-Mexico-Canada Agreement

Food safety, free trade and the election
8-Oct-2008 The Star
What does food safety have to do with free trade? A great deal, argues Common Frontiers, a Canadian group critical of the trend towards economic integration — harmonization, as it’s politely put — of standards under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Displaced people: NAFTA’s most important product
21-Sep-2008 NACLA
Since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993, the US Congress has debated and passed several new bilateral trade agreements with Peru, Jordan and Chile, as well as the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Congressional debates over immigration policy have proceeded as though those trade agreements bore no relationship to the waves of displaced people migrating to the United States, looking for work.
US House votes to end Mexican truck program
10-Sep-2008 Reuters
The US House of Representatives defied a White House veto threat on Tuesday by voting to end a controversial pilot program, begun last year under NAFTA, that gives long-haul commercial trucks from Mexico full access to US highways.
New Zealand should exploit Mexico/US FTA
26-Aug-2008 NBR
New Zealand companies should take advantage of Mexico’s free trade agreement with the United States and look at entering the lucrative US market via its neighbour, a visiting trade representative says.
Uruguay: After Doha, FTA with the EU and NAFTA fails once again
13-Aug-2008 Radio Mundo Real
Trade agreements with big blocs like the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or with the European Union have experienced a recent boost in Uruguay.
Official: Mexico open to new NAFTA talks
2-Aug-2008 Chicago Tribune
The Mexican government dismisses talk of disbanding NAFTA as politics, the country’s economy minister said Friday, but it would back the idea of a new round of North American trade talks, with the aim of including issues such as the environment and labor.
NAFTA and the elephant in the room
20-Jul-2008 Tehran Times
The biggest challenge now to our networks is not to centralize the struggle and the critique but to understand our differences. We have a pretty good understanding of the architecture built by NAFTA and added onto in the SPP. We need to continue to work together to analyze its foundations and mainstays.
Tomatoes or children?
19-Jul-2008 AFL-CIO Now blog
It is gratifying that our government will go to such lengths to stamp out a dangerous bacterium. It is less encouraging to know that the inspectors were not looking at massive labor rights violations, especially the systematic employment of young children in hazardous conditions, which have existed in the tomato industry for decades.
Free trade’s false promises
9-Jul-2008 The Guardian
According to new estimates by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, the US-Colombia free trade agreement will actually make Colombia worse off by up to $75m or one-tenth of 1% of its GDP.
Canadians can restore their rights and freedoms by cancelling NAFTA
21-Jun-2008 The Canadian
The selling of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to Canadians was based upon a basic fundamental lie. That lie is that there was no free exchange of goods and services between Canada and the United States until the late 1980’s Free Trade Agreement (FTA), that spawned NAFTA. Canadians have accordingly been conned into a belief that the cancelling of NAFTA would result in the subsequent collapse of the Canadian economy.
Dead end for free trade
19-May-2008 Globe and Mail
NAFTA was meant to deliver timely, unfettered access to Canada’s biggest trading partner. Instead, delays are longer, costs are higher, and business models are breaking down, Barrie McKenna writes
Feds Defend Trade Pacts
26-Apr-2008
Federal officials and business leaders this week dismissed calls by the Democratic presidential candidates to renegotiate NAFTA, saying free trade deals help American small businesses and the U.S. economy grow.
NAFTA prohibits collective bargaining in North Carolina
24-Apr-2008 CIMAC
Male and female workers in North Carolina, USA, request the right to freedom of association to carry out collective bargaining and to choose their representatives in every work centre.
US election looms over North American summit
21-Apr-2008 Reuters
With the US election looming over their annual summit, North American leaders gather in New Orleans this week for what is expected to be a largely symbolic meeting overshadowed by questions about free trade.
Business executives plan to stress free trade to Bush, Harper, Calderon
20-Apr-2008 Globe and Mail
Leading business executives from Canada, US and Mexico will try to rally NAFTA leaders against increasing protectionist sentiment next week by issuing a call for greater co-operation in the face of cries by Democratic presidential candidates to review free trade.
Colombia Trade Deal Splits Clintons
9-Apr-2008
The presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that her husband, the former president, supports a free trade agreement with Colombia that she strenuously opposes.
Concern grows over global trade regulation
27-Mar-2008
Amid the noisy battering the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) is taking from both Democratic presidential hopefuls, one recent statement from Hillary Clinton was particularly resonant. "We will have a very clear view of how we’re going to review Nafta," the New York senator said. "We’re going to take out the ability of foreign companies to sue us because of what we do to protect our workers."
Will US trade policy again trump public health?
27-Mar-2008 Marinij
The Bay Area in California has been in an uproar over the proposed light brown apple moth program, which involves aerial spraying of an untested synthetic pheromone-based pesticide, because of quarantines invoked by Mexico and Canada under NAFTA.
NAFTA clause that allows companies to sue governments draws flak
22-Mar-2008
When agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland Co. quietly filed court documents this month to overturn — and increase — a multi-million-dollar trade penalty it won against the Mexican government, the move shone a light on Chapter 11, perhaps the most controversial clause in the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The Colombia trap
17-Mar-2008 AlterNet
There have been a lot of surprising developments in recent days on the Colombia FTA, most recently with Dem leadership seeming to be suggesting that there could be a vote on the Colombia FTA if there is more trade adjustment assistance. (As we’ve argued before, it’s hard to get all worked up for TAA, because it is highly inadequate to the scope of the problem, but that’s for another time.)