ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the three distinct versions of internationalism vying for influence during the North American Free Trade Agreement debate. These were continentalism, hemispherism, and globalism. The essential point to be made in connection with the diagram is the contextual variability of the US “North American” trade concept. The first concept, continentalism, implies that the United States, Canada, and Mexico, within their shared borders and mutually penetrated economies and societies, have numerous interests in common that might lead even to the formation of a common identity. The second “North American” concept, hemispherism, places the continent even more explicitly in a foreign policy context. The hemispheric idea is virtually as old as US diplomatic tradition. The very widest “North American” conceptual lens for future US trade is the globalist — or, to use the formal–legal expression, the multilateralist. The globalism is a newer term than either continentalism or hemispherism in the American political lexicon, though it may be an older idea.
