The Pros And Cons Of NAFTA

NAFTA, what is it? NAFTA or the North American Free Trade Agreement is a deal between Canada, the USA, and Mexico that eliminates trade barriers such as tariffs. The goal of removing those trade barriers is to improve trade relations between countries. This agreement was supposed to allow for free trade, higher imports and exports to each other which was meant to improve the economy of all of the countries involved. But did it, did NAFTA truly help or did it hurt? By examining the treatment of workers, environmental issues, and the unemployment rates, it will be evident that NAFTA failed to properly benefit the citizens of Canada as well as its neighbours, due to its problems overweighting the benefits.

To start with, NAFTA was designed to

One of the reasons that the unemployment rate in Canada went up was due to the heavy job loss. Due to the increased imports from the US and Mexico, many manufacturing jobs were lost. According to The US Green Party, “NAFTA would destroy US and Canadian jobs by making it easier for corporations to relocate to Mexico” (The Greens). Since corporations could move to Mexico for cheap labour and not lose much income due to the removal of trade barriers allowing US and Canadian corporations to have cheap labour costs while having a similar income. Since corporations could operate with less expenses, while having similar income in Mexico, they would move there, shrinking the Canadian job market. As jobs in Canada decreased, jobs in Mexico increased. The unemployment rate in Mexico dropped when NAFTA was introduced as jobs in manufacturing increased. In their paper, Danielle Tractchenberg, an author working for the Inter-American Development Bank stated, “In the first decade of its existence, NAFTA had a net positive impact on domestic employment of 870,000 workers, an increase of 13.7%. Production workers in Mexico gained significantly, with employment increasing by 32.8%”(Trachtenberg). This shows that the number of manufacturing jobs increases significantly more in Mexico than in the US or Canada. Overall 3 countries the average increase in manufacturing was 13.7%, but that was brought up by Mexico’s 32.8% increase in manufacturing jobs. This shows that Mexico gained manufacturing jobs that Canada and the US would lose. The decrease in jobs in Canada and the increase in jobs in Mexico, due to NAFTAs direct interference, shows that NAFTA is not beneficial to the citizens of