Nafta how many countries

Trade and economic growth have also increased as a result of the treaty. On the downside, many manufacturing jobs from the U. American workers that kept these industry jobs faced reduced wages, while many workers in Mexico have been exploited.

On Sept. A Sept. It will strengthen the middle class and create good, well-paying jobs and new opportunities for the nearly half billion people who call North America home.

About one-fourth of all U. In addition, approximately one-third of U. Bush's presidency as the first phase of his Enterprise for the Americas Initiative. The administration anticipated a dramatic increase in U. These tangential agreements were intended to prevent businesses from relocating to other countries to exploit lower wages, more lenient worker health and safety regulations, and looser environmental regulations.

NAFTA did not eliminate regulatory requirements on companies wishing to trade internationally, such as rule-of-origin regulations and documentation requirements that determine whether certain goods can be traded under NAFTA.

The three NAFTA signatory countries developed a new collaborative business-classification system that facilitates comparison of business activity statistics across North America. Standard Industrial Classification SIC system, allowing businesses to be classified systematically in an ever-changing economy.

The new system enables easier comparability between all countries in North America. The first version of the classification system was released in A revision in reflected the substantial changes occurring in the information sector. The most recent revision, in , created 21 new industries by reclassifying, splitting, or combining 29 existing industries. This classification system allows for more flexibility than the SIC's four-digit structure by implementing a hierarchical six-digit coding system and classifying all economic activity into 20 industry sectors.

Five of these sectors are primarily those that produce goods, and the remaining 15 sectors provide some type of service.

A company receives its primary code based on the code definition that generates the largest portion of the company's revenue at a specified location in the past year. The fourth digit indicates the company's industry group. NAFTA's immediate aim was to increase cross-border commerce in North America, and it did indeed spur trade and investment among its three member countries by limiting or eliminating tariffs.

It was especially advantageous to small or mid-size businesses, because it lowered costs and did away with the requirement of a company to have a physical presence in a foreign country to do business there. Most of the increase came from trade between the U. S and Mexico or between the U. Real per-capita gross domestic product GDP also grew slightly in all three countries, primarily Canada and the U. It increased U. In fact, many companies did subsequently move their manufacturing operations to Mexico and other countries with lower labor costs—in particular, thousands of U.

So did inflation. As the size of cross-border transactions increases, actors lobby their governments for more regional cooperation to lock in their positions. Similar forces are at work in many industries previously sheltered from international competition. The cumulative effect of these forces creates a demand for institutionalization. This offers poorer countries in Latin America an important path to development and support for national democratization.

By gaining access to larger markets and opening economic and political institutions, development is also enhanced. However, without basic infrastructural development many countries in Latin America will still find it difficult to compete. This indicates successful regional integration for poorer countries requires development funds similar to those the EU provided southern and eastern European countries.

If the goal of Mexican president Vincente Fox of a common market is to be realized, fiscal transfers will have to precede the free movement of goods, services, and people in order to make it politically palatable.

According to Fox: "Our forecast and our idea is to sell a long-term project where we can move upwards from a trade agreement to a community of nations agreement or a North American common market. To move in that direction implies more than just trading, more than just facilitating the transit of merchandises, products, services, and capital. It has to imply the free flow of citizens, and it has to imply long-term monetary policies, maybe a common currency 20, 30, 40 years from now.

Should this path for NAFTA materialize, it is sure to influence the rest of the Western Hemisphere and further integration may depend on it. While there are many benefits of NAFTA, there are problems that pose challenges to the legitimacy of the regional experiment in North America. Further north in Canada, the main complaint is cultural domination by the United States and the loss of independent Canadian media firms.

As with the freedom that democracy grants, costs and benefits are associated with regional cooperation. Loss of independence is not necessarily a negative when it is replaced by a system of interdependence. A regional institutional demand is now being created by problems caused by NAFTA that demand resolution from affected persons. If regional democratic institutions do not arise to address these problems, there is a danger of dependence and domination which leads to undemocratic and unstable outcomes.

The Mexican market is growing rapidly, which promises more export opportunities, which in turn means more jobs. Their main effort centered on convincing people that all consumers benefit from the widest possible choice of products at the lowest possible price-;which means that consumers would be the biggest beneficiaries of lowered trade barriers. The U. Chamber of Commerce, which represents the interests of small businesses, was one of the most active supporters of NAFTA, organizing the owners and employees of small and mid-size businesses to support the agreement.

This support was key in countering the efforts of organized labor to stop the agreement. Mexican consumers spend more each year on U. Trade with Canada has also been enhanced, but the passage of the trade agreement did not have as great an impact on the already liberal trade practices that America and its northern neighbor abided by.

Small firms were stuck-;they could not afford to build, nor could they afford the export tariffs. NAFTA leveled the playing field by letting small firms export to Mexico at the same cost as the large firms and by eliminating the requirement that a business establish a physical presence in Mexico in order to do business there.

The lifting of these restrictions meant that vast new markets were suddenly open to small businesses that had previously done business only in the United States. This was regarded as especially important for small businesses that produced goods or services that had matured in U.

Still, small firms interested in conducting business in Mexico have to recognize that Mexican business regulations, hiring practices, employee benefit requirements, taxation schedules, and accounting principles all include features that are unique to that country. Small businesses, then, should familiarize themselves with Mexico's foundation of business rules and traditions-;not to mention the demographics culture of the marketplace-;before committing resources to this region.

This concern grew during the early years of the s as the economy went through a recession and the recover that followed turned out to be a "jobless recovery. Indeed, both Mexico and Canada have been repeatedly cited for environmental malfeasance.

Controversy over the treaty's environmental enforcement provisions remained strong in the late s. This accord-;one of the few provisions welcomed by environmental groups-;allows groups and ordinary citizens to accuse member nations of failing to enforce their own environmental laws. A tri-national Commission for Environmental Cooperation is charged with investigating these allegations and issuing public reports. As of , the U. But the Canadian government and many businesses in all three countries continue to work to change this accord.

Trade has grown sharply between the three nations who are parties to NAFTA but that increase of trade activity has resulted in rising trade deficits for the U.