Remaking NAFTA: Its Origin, Impact and Future /

While the Trump-Clinton contest was hardly the first presidential campaign in American history to have trade as a core issue, this is the first time in the modern era that a proponent of the dissolution of trade agreements won. [...] Canada and the U. S. launched free trade negotiations in the fall of 1985 and concluded them in the fall of 1987. [...] With the waning of the Cold War, the rise of pro-market sentiment and the post-debt crisis reform trajectory of Mexico, the United States was ready for a new strategy with its southern neighbour. [...] The full extent of Bush’s post-Cold War vision for U. S.-Latin America relations was articulated in his announcement of the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative in June 1990.3 In various forms, the Bush vision would shape relations in the Americas for the next decade and a half. [...] One of the key pillars of the initiative was the creation of a network of free trade agreements in the region, of which NAFTA would be the first.