Trump’s USMCA Cannibalized NAFTA
Harry G. Broadman
Global Business Executive & Counselor║Board Chair, Audit Committee Chair║Columnist║Keynoter ? EX White House║CFIUS║Private Equity║PwC║World Bank║US Senate║Brookings║Resources for the Future Inc║Harvard, Hopkins Faculties
Pity the poor, tortured North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the 1994 trilateral trade deal that is being superseded by the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA).
As I argue in my latest monthly Forbes column, although NAFTA wasn't perfect--and those of us who negotiated it freely admitted it at the time--26 years on, it was sorely in need of modernization.
But it did unleash unprecedented hemispheric growth.
Sadly, Trump's enacted USMCA--"USMCA 2.0", the revision of the first version of the USMCA--is riddled with "managed trade" provisions that will serve to not only dampen economic expansion, but actually undermine some of the agreement's intended objectives, such as boosting the international competitiveness of the U.S. auto industry, improving U.S. labor productivity, and promoting the long-run livelihood of the U.S. auto sector's workforce.
The Forbes column is here.