Effects of NAFTA On U.S.-Mexican Trade and GDP

摘要

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect on January 1 1994, creating a free trade area encompassing the United States, Canada, and Mexico Since then, agreements have been proposed-and, in some cases, negotiations begun or even completed-for a Free Trade area of the Americas and free trade areas with a number of other countries of varying degrees of development Consequently, assessing the effects of NAFTA is relevant to current debates about trade policy. This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) paper prepared at the request of the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance- examines aggregate U.S.-Mexican trade in goods in the first eight years after NAFTA went into effect and how it has been affected by the agreement and by other favors. The paper provides quantitative estimates of the effects of NAFTA on that trade and of the resulting effects on U.S. gross domestic product. (The paper focuses on U.S. trade with Mexico because U.S. trade with Canada had already been substantially liberalized in accordance with the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement before NAFTA went into effect).