North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), one of the largest trading blocs in the world, unites the economies of Canada, the United States, and Mexico by reducing barriers to trade and investment across the borders of those nations. Negotiations for the agreement began in 1986, and it entered into force on January 1, 1994. NAFTA was the first trade agreement between developing and developed countries, and it also sought to eliminate nontariff barriers to trade while simultaneously establishing a robust regime protecting intellectual property rights. The disproportionate bargaining strength of the United States meant that substantial components of the agreement were based on U.S. law and precedent, and the outsized volume of the U.S. consumer market means that the flows of trade governed by ...