IB History of the Americas HL 2
The positive influences of NAFTA on modern day Mexico NAFTA is short for the North American Free Trade Agreement and involves the United States of America, Mexico and Canada. NAFTA was signed by President George H.W. Bush, Mexican President Salinas, and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1992. This agreement was ratified by the legislatures of these three countries in 1993 and had commenced on January 1, 1994. The premise of this NAFTA is to have a trade amongst North American countries in order to improve relations and create better economies for all three of these nations. Seeing as how Mexico is a constantly growing country with many natural resources and the USA is a country that has grown through trade, it is self evident that NAFTA has been a productive agreement amongst these countries. The North American Free Trade Agreement is significant for its conveniences to all three countries. Since the United States and Canada are two of Mexico’s neighbors, trade with them facilitates economic strain for Mexico. As oppose to trading with other foreign countries that are much farther away than the US and Canada, the distance between these countries makes it more efficient to import and export goods. Among these three countries, there have been over $17 trillion worth of goods and services and 450 million people partaking in this free trade. Relations such as these have drastically changed various things between these countries. For example, millions of international jobs have been opened up because of NAFTA. NAFTA has also stipulated a greater demand in the agricultural business. Since Mexico is particularly known for its staples in beans and maize, the demand for these products has increased dramatically because of both domestic and international demands on them. This in turn creates more jobs. Relations among these countries not only benefit these three alone, but also other countries. Similarly to the Domino Effect, if one countries economy prospers, then other countries that trade with those nations will also do better economically. This is known as Dependency Theory. NAFTA is a great example that Dependency Theory applies to many countries and in this case, the US and the Latin American countries that are subordinate to superpowers such as the USA. From its founding, NAFTA was thought to be an economic savior and thus had a great number of investments throughout the years. Investors knew that because NAFTA is a free trade which does