Free Trade Pact Research Articles

Reasons for regional integration agreements

Regional integration agreements are commonplace in the world today. In 1996 there were 88 such agreements worldwide, covering a variety of forms from declarations of intent to unilateral preferential trade agreements, free trade treaties, customs unions, and the common market with its freedom of movement for labour and capital. Which factors have contributed to the great popularity of regional integration agreements?

Conservation is not enough

Economic development has become the overriding priority of almost every government in the last fifty years. Over this period, social and ecological imperatives have been the ruthlessly and systematically subordinated. As economic development has gone out of control, the pressures on the natural world have become immense. In fact, "free trade" and economic development are fundamentally in conflict with environmental conservation. We need to oppose the new World Trade Organization and the various free trade treaties such as the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT Uruguay Rounds), because once these have been set in place, there can be no environmental conservation. Conservation, as we know it, is not enough.

Does the name of the sender affect industrial mail response?

Recognizing the rapidly changing composition of the U.S. industrial workforce, this study addresses the challenging problem of obtaining a viable mail response rate from an industrial market sampling frame. Specifically, the effects of manipulating only the name of the sender is investigated. A total of 800 small- and medium-sized southwestern business firms with contact persons having domestic (i.e., American-Christian)-sounding names were randomly and equally allocated among four different senders, all belonging to a southwest state university. The survey questionnaire dealt with the effects of free-trade pacts on small- and medium-sized businesses. Results indicate that senders with American-Christian-sounding names generate a higher response rate than those with foreign-non-Christian-sounding names. The potential implications of these results to industrial marketers are discussed.

The impacts of deregulation and the US-Canada free trade agreement on Canadian transportation modes

Within the last five years the transportation industry in Canada has had to adjust to two major policy developments: the free trade treaty with the USA and deregulation. This paper attempts a preliminary assessment of the impacts of these initiatives on the major Canadian transport modes. While the available evidence suggests that some of the effects on the modes have been generally favourable, the paper argues that the policies will substantially limit the government's ability to influence Canadian transportation in the future.

Chemical Industry Pushes Change in Free Trade Pact Rules of Origin

Chemical Industry Pushes Change in Free Trade Pact Rules of Origin

Vista Chemical protests Quebec plant subsidies

Vista Chemical has petitioned U.S. trade representative Mickey Kantor to intercede against plans by Quebec's government to subsidize new Canadian production of linear alkylbenzene (LAB). The International Chemical Workers Union has joined Vista in this action. Filed under section 409 (b) of the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, Vista's petition asks Kantor to find that the U.S. LAB industry will face likely harm from subsidized Canadian LAB exports. Vista and Monsanto are the only major U.S. LAB producers. Vista's request is only the second such petition ever filed under the U.S.-Canada free trade pact, and the first during the Clinton Administration. The nonferrous metal industry filed the first petition. At issue is Canada's first LAB plant, a 220 million-lb-per-year plant in Becancour, Quebec, near Montreal; it is scheduled to come on stream in 1995. The Spanish company PetroquImica Espannola (Petresa), a major LAB producer, will own 51% of the venture, and Societe Generale de ...

MEXICO! WE APPRECIATE YOUR BUSINESS

They never stop! House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt joined by the newly elected in congress continue their opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement. When are these caretakers of the public trust going to get it? One day we hear that aid for Russia will insure that a rich, free long‐term market develops for American goods to benefit us all, and the next day we hear negatives about how the free trade pact with Mexico will kidnap jobs from America. These noisy complainers must have descended from the folks that preached misery when the agrarian age ended in 1775 and they refused the challenge of coping with change brought about by the industrial revolution. More than 200 years later, we again hear a familiar chorus of the ever defiant, resisting change, and excusing their failure to understand or cope by censuring the free trade pact with Mexico.

Civil Engineering Education in Canada

SUMMARY Although the establishment of the Free Trade Pact between Canada and the US in 1989 was thought to be a solution to foreseeable economic difficulties in Canada, the reality is that North America is in an economic recession at the present time. Economists and politicians grasp at every positive economic indicator that shows the slightest trend upward, but unemployment stands at an average of 14% across the country. Despite a downturn in economic activity, Canadian engineering services captured about 8% of the international design market, with the US being the single largest market segment [l]. In view of the development of more global markets for engineering services, it is important that Canadian engineers be trained to be competitive in other world markets, i.e. in Europe and Pacific Rim countries. This paper outlines the professional and educational systems in Canada relative to the training of engineers but centres on the training of civil engineers at the University of New Brunswick and the ev...

Environmental Issues Still Plague Free Trade Pact

The initial concensus on a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) marks the beginning of a second stage of negotiations on this treaty, this time between the Administration and Congress. Although several issues probably will be resolved with little fanfare, the challenge of environmental safeguards likely will be debated at length. Administration supporters of the pact believe the enhanced economic climate will lead to significant environmental improvements, but critics fear just the opposite. The National Association of Manufacturers sponsored a special forum on NAFTA and its environmental aspects earlier this month, bringing together some of the major players in this arena. The economic value of the trade agreement is widely accepted, and has already met with encouragement from representatives of the chemical industry (C&EN, Aug. 17, page 6). But some in Congress are having second thoughts about the environmental provisions. Sen. Max S. Baucus (D.-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Subcommittee...

U.S. Chemical Industry Supports North American Free Trade Pact

U.S. Chemical Industry Supports North American Free Trade Pact

Canadian Chemical Industry Backs North American Free Trade Pact

I n June 1990, the presidents of Mexico and the U.S. agreed to negotiate a bilateral trade pact between the two countries. In September 1990, Canada announced that it would join in the negotiations, transforming the trade talks into a springboard for a possible trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The negotations still are going on. Earlier, C&EN examined NAFTA from the Mexican chemical industry point of view (C&EN, Sept. 9, 1991, page 7). In this second of a series of articles, C&EN takes a look at how the Canadian chemical industry feels about NAFTA. A future article examine NAFTA through the eyes of the U.S. chemical industry. G. Firman Bentley, senior vice president of Nova Corp. of Alberta until his retirement recently, says that Canada's interest in NAFTA is both offensive and defensive. Many leaders in the Canadian chemical industry express those same sentiments. Last year, Canada sold $15 million worth of chemicals ...

Mosul and the Free Trade Treaties: The Non-Effects of the Commercial Convention on an Inland Province

The Commercial Convention of 1838 has often been used as a landmark delimiting the end of Ottoman economic insulation and the beginning of massive influence by foreign powers. Quite recently, Ottoman historians and economists have documented the enormous importance of the Free Trade Treaties, showing that “whereas British manufacturers began to expand their markets in the Ottoman Empire before 1838, the opening of Ottoman primary products to trade with Britain accelerated only after the signing of the Free Trade Treaties” (Pamuk, 1987, p. 29). For the empire as a whole, it seems probable that the Treaties influenced the patterns of international trade.

Mexico's Foreign Policy in 1990: Electoral Sovereignty and Integration with the United States

Mexico's Foreign Policy of 1990 was marked by an acceleration of trends that began a few years ago, producing a pattern of relationships that would have been almost unimaginable only a decade ago. On the one hand, its most obvious characteristic — begun during the de la Madrid sexenio and heightened during Salinas's first year in office — was that economic recovery became the focal point of government strategy: i.e., there was an “economization” of foreign policy. On the other hand, and reflecting the weight given to economic issues, the movement toward integration with the United States — a trend already apparent in the previous administration — picked up speed and acted as a direct complement of the development strategy. This move became more concrete as preliminary talks got under way preparatory to signing a joint free trade treaty.

Book Review: The Free Trade Papers

The current negotiations over a free trade pact with the US serve as a telling reminder that liberal democracy's promise as a system of popular rule has always far exceeded its practice. Brian Mulroney did not make free trade an election issue; rather he presented himself as a typical consensus politician, offering an array of expedient promises.

Prospects for a Bilateral Free Trade Treaty

Prospects for a Bilateral Free Trade Treaty

Swedish Elites and the EEC: Models of the Future

Utilizing principles of countersystem analysis, derived from earlier co-authored studies of domestic change in advanced industrial societies, the author considers alternative consequences of Sweden's 1972 free trade treaty with the expanded European Community. On the basis of interviews with a systematic sample of leading officials in the government, parliament, the administration, interest groups, and the communication media as well as a qualitative assessment of Swedish foreign policy requirements, the author posits three conceivable patterns of policy choice in Sweden's future relations with the Common Market: (1) expanded trade and technical cooperation, (2) ad hoc membership in the EEC, and (3) assertive neutrality. Elite expectations and contemporary economic-technological links between Sweden and Western Europe indicate that the most probable course among these alternatives is ad hoc membership.

Swedish Elites and the EEC: Models of the Future

Utilizing principles of countersystem analysis, derived from earlier co-authored studies of domestic change in advanced industrial societies, the author considers alternative consequences of Sweden's 1972 free trade treaty with the expanded European Com munity. On the basis of interviews with a systematic sample of leading officials in the government, parliament, the administration, interest groups, and the communica tion media as well as a qualitative assessment of Swedish foreign policy requirements, the author posits three conceivable patterns of policy choice in Sweden's future rela tions with the Common Market: (1) expanded trade and technical cooperation, (2) ad hoc membership in the EEC, and (3) assertive neutrality. Elite expectations and con temporary economic-technological links between Sweden and Western Europe indi cate that the most probable course among these alternatives is ad hoc membership.

Free trade in Western Europe

Independently of the results of the Summit Conference in Paris it can be said that the entry of Great Britain, Ireland and Denmark into the EEC and the Free Trade Treaties between the enlarged Community and the remaining EFTA countries have decisively advanced the integration process in Western Europe.

Natal, The Cape and the Indian Ocean, 1846–1880

Attempts to promote closer relations among the states of Southern Africa in the third quarter of the nineteenth century were thwartedinter aliaby intense rivalry between the two British coastal colonies, Natal and the Cape. The sources of this struggle have usually been sought in the strenuous efforts made by each colony to monopolize the transit trade to the interior and in their attempts to develop in the hinterland those markets which the metropolitan countries of Europe did not offer them. But Natal's geographical situation tempted her also to seek economic salvation in the Indian Ocean. At various stages of the colony's history, Natal's businessmen and politicians showed considerable interest in the commercial potential of the region, in its labour resources, and in the creation of steamship and telegraphic lines of communication through the Ocean to the East and Europe. These, it was believed, would not only be of economic advantage to Natal but would also afford her greater independence in many ways from the older-established and far wealthier sister colony. Yet these conflicting ambitions and policies—particularly the commercial connexions of each colony with Mauritius—did much to exacerbate relations between them. Both in 1866 and in 1876, proposals merely for a free trade treaty in each other's produce were easily defeated. The divergence of interests and sympathies between the two colonies, so evident at the National Convention in 1909, stemmed from a great variety of sources—political, economic, geographical and others. Their rivalry had a long history, but was seldom so pronounced as in the earliest years of their relationship.