Nafta Agriculture Fact Sheet

Mexican cuisine has emerged as a paradox of globalization. Food enthusiasts throughout the world celebrate the humble taco at the same time that Mexicans are eating fewer tortillas and more processed food. Today Mexico is experiencing an epidemic of diet-related chronic illness. The precipitous rise of obesity and diabetes—attributed to changes in the Mexican diet—has resulted in a public health emergency. In her gripping new book, Alyshia Gálvez exposes how changes in policy following NAFTA have fundamentally altered one of the most basic elements of life in Mexico—sustenance. Mexicans are faced with a food system that favors food security over subsistence agriculture, development over sustainability, market participation over social welfare, and ideologies of self-care over public health. Trade agreements negotiated to improve lives have resulted in unintended consequences for people’s everyday lives.

Reports on the latest value and volume of U.S. farm exports, by commodity and region, as well as agricultural trade balance, import commodities, and export outlook.

The United States – Mexico – Canada Agreement (USMCA) was signed on November 30, 2018 and aims to replace and modernize the North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This paper uses a global, multisector, computable-general-equilibrium model to provide an analytical assessment of five key provisions in the new agreement, including tighter rules of origin in the automotive, textiles and apparel sectors, more liberalized agricultural trade, and other trade facilitation measures. The results show that together these provisions would adversely affect trade in the automotive, textiles and apparel sectors, while generating modest aggregate gains in terms of welfare, mostly driven by improved goods market access, with a negligible effect on real GDP. The welfare benefits from USMCA would be greatly enhanced with the elimination of U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada and Mexico and the elimination of the Canadian and Mexican import surtaxes imposed after the U.S. tariffs were put in place.

In recent decades, Canada's agricultural industry, one of the world's largest, has had to adjust to global trade developments such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization. Internationalization and Canadian Agriculture examines the patterns of continuity and change in Canadian agricultural policy making in important areas like farm income support programs, prairie grain marketing, supply management, animal and food product safety, and the regulation of genetically modified crops and foods. Arguing that the effects of internationalization have been mediated by Canada's political institutional framework, Grace Skogstad demonstrates how the goals and strategies of authoritative political actors in Canada's federal and parliamentary systems have been decisive to policy developments. Skogstad details the interaction between agriculture and the political economy of Canada, shows how international and domestic trade shape Canadian agricultural policies, and argues that while agricultural programs have changed, the post-war state assistance agricultural paradigm has persisted. A thorough political analysis and history of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Canadian agricultural policy and policy-making, Internationalization of Canadian Agriculture is an important contribution to political economy and public policy.