North American Free Trade Agreement - 275 Words

North American Free Trade Agreement (Essay Sample) Content: North American Free Trade Agreement [Name] [Institutional Affiliation] [Course] [Date] History The North American Free Trade Agreement was established in 1994, it has three member states namely Canada, USA and Mexico. It replaced the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement which was between the US and Canada. The Negotiations on NAFTA started in June 1991 in the Canadian city of Toronto. They then proceeded to Washington in August 1992 where a bigger deal was negotiated. In the Washington negotiations there were nineteen individual working under six major categories namely; dispute settlement, market access, investment, services, and intellectual property and trade rules. Each of the six categories represented a certain area which NAFTA was to deal in on getting formed. In each of the groups, a representative of each member country headed each group and the leaders were to meet regularly to discus on various crucial issues. As the meetings went on, the three states formed seven ministerial meeting which were entitled the role of monitoring the progress and keeping the necessary pressure to facilitate the formation of NAFTA (Hendl, 2006). The negotiations officially kicked off in June but the real bargaining kicked off in October, and this is when the first tariff orders were exchanged. The drafting started end October after a ministerial meeting in Mexico. By December 1991, the lawyers had combined adraft which highlighted the initial proposals. On the 13th and 14th of December the president of the US and that of Canada made a public announcement that they were committed to forming a free trade agreement. In January 1992, the groups entitled the responsibility to form the agreement arrived at in Georgetown in Washington, and produced the first fully bracketed text that had the preferred elements and language of the member countries (Hendl, 2006). On February 1992, a four day session was held in Dallas, it was aimed at resolving the various issues that the negotiators seemed to have almost agreed upon. The Dallas agreement failed to address major areas such as autos and energy. The Dallas momentum did not endure for long and there was even more frustrations when President Bush made an announcement that the deal was almost through. Canada was interested in having the right to keep the rights of reviewing some of the foreign investments that the US wanted to avoid after formation of NAFTA. The USA was interested in having a clear definition of investment and expropriation. The arbitratio...