ABSTRACT
The North American Free Trade Agreement reduces barriers to trade and investment between Mexico, the United States, and Canada — three countries of dramatically different sizes and levels of development. The executive concluded that a free trade agreement would provide a means to “lock in” the market reforms and trade liberalization measures undertaken by the Salinas regime and to encourage Mexico to pursue a foreign policy less antagonistic to the interests of the United States. The export and investment opportunities in Asia, in particular, stood in contrast to the problems — debt, political instability, dictatorship, corruption, rent–seeking, income inequality, byzantine regulations, and unproductive public spending — that had plagued Latin America. Despite the weak performance of the Latin American economies, Canada’s involvement in peace initiatives in the region raised its profile in Canadian foreign policy, and directly engaged the prime minister and the secretary of state for external affairs.
