Renegotiating NAFTA - what's up for discussion between US and Canada.

Warrigal

Warrigal

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Sydney, Australia
Dispute resolution mechanism, dairy, wine, investment and duty-free cross-border shopping are all issues likely to be renegotiated between the US and Canada. The Canadians are getting ready now.

Some background information on the 1988 FTA and 1994 NAFTA here: http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/commons-committee-to-discuss-nafta-renegotiations-1.3512868

Sounds do-able. What does everyone think about this?
 

There are no matches to "Ross Perot" in my link so you will have to unpack this one for me.
What did Ross Perot say?
 

The NAFTA agreement has been of great benefit to the United States and Canada.

And from it's inception there has been ways of negotiating the terms.

The sucking sound? It came from China with which there is no trade agreement. That's where the jobs went.
 
Camper6 said:
The NAFTA agreement has been of great benefit to the United States and Canada.

And from it's inception there has been ways of negotiating the terms.

The sucking sound? It came from China with which there is no trade agreement. That's where the jobs went.
Click to expand...

Where I worked, after NAFTA most of the manufacturing jobs went to Mexico. And this was just after at considerable expense, moving into a huge manufacturing building we proudly set up with the "Just In Time" philosophy. If I remember correctly, the justification was that if we didn't do that our competitors would and they would under price us and put us out of business... so we sacrificed manufacturing jobs so the rest of us could stay employed. Hard to argue too hard with that with government policies being what they were.
 
dpwspringer said:
Where I worked, after NAFTA most of the manufacturing jobs went to Mexico. And this was just after at considerable expense, moving into a huge manufacturing building we proudly set up with the "Just In Time" philosophy. If I remember correctly, the justification was that if we didn't do that our competitors would and they would under price us and put us out of business... so we sacrificed manufacturing jobs so the rest of us could stay employed. Hard to argue too hard with that with government policies being what they were.
Click to expand...

That is strange because I hardly see anything for sale Made in Mexico other than produce in the winter. However. If I go to Walmart it's almost impossible to find anything not made in China.

Almost impossible to find anything but automobiles made in Canada or the U.S. except for some brand products like Kitchenaid blenders which are expensive but well made and worth the price.

I would gladly pay more for a quality product made in U.S. or Canada than one of the throwaways from China. I bought a can opener from China. It bends. I have a 50 year old electric can opener made by GE in Canada. It still works. And is it ever neat. It opens the can and a magnet keeps the lid.

But I guess that's the problem. If it lasts 50 years the company making it doesn't get to replace it.

Now as far as NAFTA goes. All it really amounts to is that there are no duty tariffs between signatories. So it means Canada and U.S. and Mexico can import and export to each other without a tariff. It means more sales for all. There is the argument of protectionism that will be negotiated. Canada has a supply management in force for dairy products. Wisconsin doesn't and they are over supplied keeping the price down and they are complaining.

There's no way you can compete with kitchen gadgets made in China. Even with the duties they are cheaper than anything that could be made in Canada or the U.S. with the wages that are paid.

Oh by the way part of my job when I worked was as an importer exporter so I am really familiar with NAFTA. At one time Mexico was not part of the deal. It was Canada and the U.S. and since our standard of living is pretty close NAFTA was a good deal for both. No sucking sound of jobs going to Canada although some candy manufacturers set up plants in Canada because the price of sugar was a lot less than the U.S. That would have happened with or without NAFTA.
 
Camper6 said:
That is strange because I hardly see anything for sale Made in Mexico other than produce in the winter. However. If I go to Walmart it's almost impossible to find anything not made in China.
Click to expand...
The time frame for my comment was shortly after NAFTA went into affect, back in the 90s. I've been retired since 2000 and China wasn't the world's manufacturer like it seems to be today. Before Mexico there was a big push to make high volume products in Japan but that slowed down and pretty much ended when the exchange rate for the yen changed by about a factor of 2 over a short period of time. Then NAFTA hit and it was off to Mexico but this time it wasn't just the high volume items, it was pretty much everything.
 
The company I worked for imported grain cleaner parts from the U S. Huge tariffs prior to NAFTA. After NAFTA we became the number one manufacturer of grain cleaning machines. So you see how NAFTA benefited us and the U.S. Supplier and we even exported cleaners to Mexico.
 

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