The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

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The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), came into effect on January 1, 1994, creating the largest free trade region in the world, generating economic growth and helping to raise the standard of living for the people of all three countries participating. By strengthening the rules and procedures governing trade and investment, the NAFTA has shown to be a great base for adding to Canada’s prosperity and has set a valuable example of the benefits of trade liberalization for the rest of the world. NAFTA was designed with many economic results in mind. Hopes were that not only trade would be easier, cheaper, and easier for all countries involved, but economic wealth and growth would follow. The support for NAFTA was spilt among the citizens of Canada, half saw the potential, while the rest seeing it to have a terrible effect on Canadian employment. Roughly 20 years has past since putting this agreement in place, and the NAFTA agreement has proven to been a mixed blessing for this country. Trade dates back many years ago to early society. Money did not exist and people needed goods that other people had. This resulted in exchanging different items for other goods known as trading. Trade had been used for many years until modern society’s introduced currencies. This was the start of modern economics, and what trading has evolved to today. Before modern trade was introduced there had been many problems with it. People were not getting fair deals- when you trade one person always gets something worth a higher value, and the other a lower value. Another issue is that it was tough to trade items in bulk to provide for many people until the mid to late 1700’s. Skip a hundred or so years and you have modern trade. Neighboring coun... ... middle of paper ... ...thin the NAFTA regions, it has helped Canadians to have affordable living supplies, and food through trade by removing the old high tarrifs on Mexican agricultural products. This also allows for Canadians to have fruits and vegatables throughout the whole year to stay healthy, and not pay the high off season pricing for produce. With Canadians saving on duty free imports, this add up resulting in Canadians having extra money to spend on importing different types of goods. NAFTA has also introduced multilingual labeling on all products. This was not only appealing to customers, but also to global trade. (Pam Demetrakakes) Since Canada has two national languages (French and English) and labels properly, Canada can not only trade with the United States, but with other countries that speak those languages, such as United Kingdom, France, and or other parts of Europe.

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