LOFTY GOALS BEING ACHIEVED BY NAFTA

Benefits abound 20 years after landmark trade accord

Looking back 20 years to the beginning of 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement linking the United States to Canada and Mexico went into effect, it is hard to see what the fuss was about or why it took a Herculean effort of two U.S. presidents and Congress to get it over the finish line.

None of the dire doomsday predictions came true. There was no “giant sucking sound” of jobs to Mexico any more than there was to our northern neighbor, Canada. Unsafe foods and trucks hauling those goods did not flood the United States. Net migration from Mexico is less today than when the agreement went into effect.

But what NAFTA did accomplish is beyond dispute.

It became the first free-trade agreement among developed and developing countries. It was the first trade agreement to include all agricultural products and allow their free movement to consumers in the region. It created a regional market in excess of $19 trillion — much larger than any market created by other regional trade agreements before or since. It helped to nearly quadruple trade flows among the three countries, from just under $300 billion annually to over $1 trillion each year. It has made Canada our largest trading partner, supporting 8 million jobs in this country, and Mexico our secondlargest trading partner, supporting about 6 million jobs here at home.

Perhaps most important, the economic integration of the countries has become so intertwined as a result of the agreement that a large part of what we buy from Canada and

JIM KOLBE

See KOLBE, Page B11