The Pros And Cons Of NAFTA

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Since its implementation by the United States, Mexico, and Canada in January 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement has primarily provided for the elimination of tariffs on products, liberalized trade in agriculture, textiles, and automobile manufacturing, and implemented labor and environmental safeguards. Now, almost twenty-three years later, most artificial obstructions to free trade and investment between the countries involved, primarily the United States and Mexico, have been dismantled and as the result of this agreement, trade among these two countries has increased from roughly $290 billion in 1993 to more than $1.1 trillion in 2016 (McBride and Sergie 2017). However, while this accord, also known as NAFTA, has brought a diverse …show more content…

When evaluating NAFTA through Aristotle’s proposed ethical criteria, it has clearly performed unsuccessfully at fairly distributing the benefits and resources created throughout its implementation over the past twenty-three years.
Although NAFTA brought growth to the gross domestic products of both Mexico and the United States, and fostered an increase in job creation and productivity as well as both imports and exports between the two nations, the percentage increase of both gross domestic products is significantly greater with respect to Mexico, and the trade balance as well as overall job growth heavily favored Mexican markets (Congressional Budget Office 2003). While a portion of these unbalanced effects can be attributed to various Mexican …show more content…

According to the Congressional Budget Office’s report concerning the effects of NAFTA on U.S.-Mexican Trade and GDP (2003), “the expanded trade resulting from NAFTA has raised the United States’ gross domestic product very slightly [and] the effect on Mexican GDP has also been positive and similar in magnitude” (pg. 5.), which signifies that the North American Trade Agreement, at least partially, adheres to the ethical justice criteria, as it has ensured an equal opportunity and equality in the specified economic area for both countries involved. In addition, the North American Free Trade Agreement has also increased labor productivity for Mexico and the United States, as signified by the stimulation of both Mexican industrial plants throughout the North (Villarreal and Fergusson 2017) and the dissemination of new production and distribution techniques across the United States (Hufbauer and Cimino-Isaacs 2016). While the specific type of dissemination in which the improvements in labor productivity occured differs slightly among the two involved countries in this deal, the proponents of equality and justice still clearly remain. Among the other distributions of this accord are the increases in exports and imports between both Mexico and the United States,