NAFTA / USMCA

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect on 1 January 1994, eliminating most tariffs and many non-tariff barriers between the United States, Canada, and Mexico over a phased schedule, and became the template for a wave of subsequent US bilateral and regional trade deals. It dramatically deepened North American manufacturing integration, especially in the automotive and agricultural sectors, and Mexico's export economy grew substantially under it, but the agreement remained politically contentious throughout its life: critics blamed it for US manufacturing job losses to Mexico, for depressing wages, and for undercutting small Mexican corn farmers exposed to subsidized US agricultural exports, while supporters credited it with lower consumer prices and a more competitive North American manufacturing bloc versus Asia and Europe. After campaigning against NAFTA, the Trump administration renegotiated it into the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA, called T-MEC in Mexico and CUSMA in Canada), which entered force on 1 July 2020: it tightened automotive rules of origin (raising the required regional content share and adding a minimum-wage-factory rule), added new labor rights, digital trade, and environmental provisions absent from the original 1994 text, and included a mandatory six-year joint review with a 16-year sunset clause forcing periodic renegotiation.

• Existed: 1994 CE – present
• Type: Entity
• Government: Free Trade Agreement