NAFTA at 20: North America’s Free-Trade Area and Its Impact on Agriculture

This report examines the integration of North America’s agricultural and food markets as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), implemented in 1994. NAFTA has had a profound effect on many aspects of North American agriculture over the past two decades. With a few exceptions, intraregional agricultural trade is now completely free of tariff and quota restrictions, and the agricultural sectors of the member countries—Canada, Mexico, and the United States—have become far more integrated, as is evidenced by rising trade in a wider range of agricultural products, substantial levels of cross-border investment, and important changes in consumption and production. The report also examines recent disputes among its constituents and identifies opportunities for further reforms of mutual benefit to the member countries, with particular attention devoted to the NAFTA governments’ efforts to seek deeper regional integration through such means as regulatory cooperation and modifying the agreement’s rules of origin and broader access to markets in other parts of the world through the negotiation of additional free-trade agreements.