President Trump has announced that the United States will be renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). However, research conducted by Dr. Raymond Robertson of the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, shows strong evidence for NAFTA’s benefits and warns against throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Robertson observes that “the objections to NAFTA are really about labor market adjustment problems more broadly. Ending NAFTA won’t solve those problems. Furthermore, Canada and Mexico are the United States’ top trading partners, and empirical evidence shows that all three countries reap significant economic benefits from the relationship.”
You can read more about Robertson’s analysis in a short policy brief titled “The NAFTA Intellect Disconnect: Actual Costs and Benefits versus Popular Perceptions,” published by the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics, and Public Policy. In the article, Robertson argues that “the most accurate way to think of the NAFTA economic area is as one integrated economy rather than three separate ones. That is, rather than thinking of Mexico as a competitor, we should think of Mexico as a partner in our national production process.”
The full article can be found online at http://bush.tamu.edu/mosbacher/takeaway/.
