From NAFTA to TPP, Could advantages of multilateral trade blocs outweigh their disadvantages on the US economy?
Introduction
North American Free Trade Agreement, also well known as NAFTA, is a trilateral agreement signed by Canada, the United States and Mexico aiming at establishing a trade bloc in North America. Unlike the European Union, the main target of NAFTA is to accentuate cooperation on the level of economic development. Now after nearly 20 years of development, possessing a GDP of 19.886 trillion US dollars by the year 2013, NAFTA surpassed the EU and became the world’s largest trading bloc at the moment.
Since the integration of European single market accelerated in the beginning of the 1980s, the competitive advantages of the United
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Therefore, its success or failure concerns the trend of trade blocs in the future. As in 2005 the framework of Trans-Pacific strategic Partnership Agreement (TPP) rose to the surface, the US told the world that they were advocating a wider international trade pact which added more developed countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Singapore as well as developing countries including Vietnam and Peru. While the negotiations are still in progress, it might be the moment to review the 20 years’ development of NAFTA and see whether the advantages of multilateral trade blocs could outweigh their disadvantages on the US …show more content…
It caused the American manufacturers a great deal of troubles as domestic products have gradually lost their competitiveness with each passing year. On the other hand, due to the wide disparity of labor costs between the US and Mexico, large numbers of US manufacturing facilities relocated to Mexico in the hope of saving costs. Hence, in 1997 three years after the enactment of NAFTA, the US has lost more than 400,000 jobs which was described as a “trade debacle” . Also last year, according to the American largest labor union, the AFL-CIO, the NAFTA deal led to “an exodus of at least 700,000 jobs” , which almost doubled the record from 17 years ago.
During a democratic primary debate in 2007, the then Senator Obama took dim views of NAFTA when he was running for the presidency. “I would immediately call the president of Mexico and the president of Canada to try to amend NAFTA,” he promised in order to advocate his political stand. Then he added “It should reflect the basic principle that our trade agreements should not just be good for Wall Street, they should also be good for Main