On July 1, 2020, after much expectation and delay, the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)—a greatly revised version of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of 1994—came into effect. This timely book by the author of the preeminent guide to NAFTA and an active participant and private sector advocate in the USMCA negotiation and legislative process provides a chapter-by-chapter analysis of the new agreement, clearly describing what has changed from the earlier agreement and what is new. After a concise but expertly calibrated summary of NAFTA, the author proceeds systematically through a practical analysis of each USMCA provision, emphasizing such crucial new elements as the following: new rules on intellectual property rights; stricter rules of origin within the automotive industry; major reforms in Mexican labor laws and their enforceability; opening of Canada’s agricultural and dairy sector to more U.S. competition; entirely new chapter on digital trade; new dispute mechanisms; requirement of an increased minimum wage in auto plants; and a new chapter on environmental standards. Changes in such important aspects of trade as textiles and apparel, ownership of hydrocarbons, cross-border trade in services, and anticorruption measures are also fully described. The USMCA is a response to a United States initiative to renegotiate NAFTA. As a key regional trade agreement with vast global ramifications, familiarity with its content and rules is essential for all business, legal, policymaking, and academic parties concerned with international trade. This useful practical guide will be a welcome addition to private and corporate libraries, including corporate counsel, customs brokers, freight forwarders, logistics and import-export managers, government officials, and academics who need a thorough understanding of the new agreement.

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), a modified and modernized version of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), will continue to govern most economic relationships in North America, including the more than $1.3 trillion in annual regional trade in goods and services, for the foreseeable future. This book provides a detailed analysis and critique of the provisions of the USMCA and the USMCA’s relation to NAFTA. It is designed to assist lawyers and non-lawyers alike, including law, economics and public policy scholars, business professionals and governmental officials who require an understanding of one of the world’s most economically and politically significant regional trade agreements.

The United States – Mexico – Canada Agreement (USMCA) was signed on November 30, 2018 and aims to replace and modernize the North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This paper uses a global, multisector, computable-general-equilibrium model to provide an analytical assessment of five key provisions in the new agreement, including tighter rules of origin in the automotive, textiles and apparel sectors, more liberalized agricultural trade, and other trade facilitation measures. The results show that together these provisions would adversely affect trade in the automotive, textiles and apparel sectors, while generating modest aggregate gains in terms of welfare, mostly driven by improved goods market access, with a negligible effect on real GDP. The welfare benefits from USMCA would be greatly enhanced with the elimination of U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada and Mexico and the elimination of the Canadian and Mexican import surtaxes imposed after the U.S. tariffs were put in place.

The renegotiation and possible termination of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) sparked a lot of interest and concern in light of the United States’ declared objective to “rebalance the benefits” of the agreement. This edited book provides an overview of the changes brought to the NAFTA by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) or NAFTA 2.0. Grouping leading academics and experts from the three countries, the book covers the major topics in the transition from the NAFTA to the USMCA. The book also sheds light on the evolution of North American economic integration within the past three decades and reflects on the significance of the regional integration model represented by the NAFTA and now the USMCA. The book is aimed at scholars, students, officials, professionals and interested citizens concerned by the big issues surrounding North American integration and economic globalization.

This book provides an overview of evolving patterns of trade partnership with historical perspective. It presents changing requirements of industry competitiveness and explains the vital relationships between trade partnerships and industry competitiveness. As well, it further examines the interactive relationships between trade partnerships and industry competitiveness. In recent years, with decreasing strategic alliances among nations and less visibility of international governance mechanisms (e.g., WTO) and counter to globalization, preferential trade agreements and free-trade agreements have proliferated among nations. At the same time, industrial competitiveness is becoming a serious strategic policy priority of nations—both advanced and emerging economies. Theoretical discussion focuses on the practices of global network capabilities for the top of the pyramid (ToP) and base of the pyramid (BoP). Special focus is on trade partnerships and industry competitiveness in the Asian economies (China, Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia), three ASEAN nations (Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia), and Mexico. Extensive industry and firm-level case studies discuss ToP and BoP interface capabilities in the form of manufacturing and services life-cycle management, which extends value creation and delivery of manufacturing and services. This extension integrates the cloud ecosystem, such as timely data/information/knowledge flows via the virtual world; and ground value chains, such as the flow of complex real goods and services in the visible world.

Introduction -- Intellectual property rights basics -- Global intellectual property holdings -- Contribution of intellectual property to U.S. economy -- The organized structure of IPR protection -- U.S. trade law -- Issues for Congress.

International trade and investment have been buffeted over the past three years by US-China trade war tariffs, high-technology export controls, and other economic sanctions targeting Chinese policies. The COVID-19 pandemic has further disrupted production and created bottlenecks transporting goods within and between countries. International businesses have had to recalibrate their supply chains to make them more resilient to these and other shocks. Firms needing to diversify from China are now considering whether to reorganize production across Asia to complement continuing Chinese operations or to shift investment out of Asia to shorten supply chains serving the US market. The most promising candidate for large-scale nearshoring is Mexico, but so far at least, Mexico has not lured substantial new investments that could supplant Asian production serving the US market. In a collaborative effort to explore the feasibility and benefits of relocating production to Mexico, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) organized a group of leading scholars and former officials to offer their individual perspectives in this collection of short essays. The Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Center for Strategic and International Studies are grateful to Chubb Ltd. for its support of this project.