ABSTRACT
Three large puzzles confront the origin of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The initial puzzle concerns the reason why the North American trade agreement ever was conceived in the first place. A second puzzle, cutting in something of the opposite direction to the first, is why in the spring and summer of 1993 NAFTA began to run aground politically. The third and largest puzzle is that, on matters of trade liberalization, party politics appears to have flip-flopped in each of the countries. A tactical reason for NAFTA bolstered the structural argument. Without NAFTA, North America confronted the possibility of a long slide into protectionism. The NAFTA would determine whether momentum would continue in terms of trade liberalization on the part of the United States, and by extension to some degree throughout the international system. Only 102 Democratic members of Congress voted for NAFTA while 156 voted against it.
