Complex, cross-cutting effects

Integration in North America has been fairly well structured to achieve specific economic and political effects. In particular, NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Area) purports to promote economic growth and investment as well as political cooperation among the three member states, Canada, Mexico and the USA. During the 1990s investment and trade amongst the three partners have continued to grow quite rapidly, and in spite of various kinds of economic frictions the integration process has tended to strengthen political collaboration between them as well. Judged in terms of achievements regarding these specific economic and political objectives, NAFTA has clearly been successful. The name of a NAFTA-related website (www.naftaworks.org) of the Mexican Ministry of Commerce and Industrial Development at the Embassy of Mexico in Washington, DC reflects this success: NAFTA works!

Opposition to NAFTA has often focused on what was left out of the integration agreement, where there have allegedly been negative results. Concerns about issues largely left out of NAFTA with prejudicial results range widely from political issues (promotion of democracy in Mexico) to socioeconomic issues (job security in the USA and Canada, labour rights in all three countries, migration from Mexico) and cultural issues (protection of national culture and language).

Policy makers from the three partner countries considered such issues extraneous to the specific commercial purposes of NAFTA and consequently excluded them from the agreement in order to avoid unnecessary problems.