NAFTA and the Lessons of U.S.-Mexican Trade Relations

Sunrock Institute 900 19 th St., N.W., Suite 750, Washington, D.C. 20006 Tel (202) 429-0281 Fax (202) 429-0283 International Trade and Public Policy NAFTA and the Lessons of U.S.-Mexican Trade Relations November 2001

Contents Preface Executive Summary Conclusion and Recommendations NAFTA and the Lessons of U.S.-Mexican Trade Relations November 2001. Sunrock Institute 2

Preface This report reflects on trade in the Americas and the role of the private sector in trade and investment through a review of the NAFTA agreement, and an exploration of the lessons of U.S.-Mexico relations. It is widely known that the United States began pursuing bilateral trade agreements and free trade agreements as a complement to multilateral trade negotiations under the GATT Uruguay Round and as a possible alternative in the event that the multilateral process might stall fifteen years ago. The Uruguay Round was quite significant in two ways. Firstly, it was the first place where global services and financial reform were negotiated among the countries, led by the United States, and secondly, it was also the first place where the private sector joined in public policy making from the beginning. Sunrock Institute has monitored the dynamic change of the role of the private sector in bilateral agreements and in multilateral trade negotiations, and has completed a series of studies to examine the economic effects and policy implications of these agreements. In 2001, Sunrock Institute reviewed previous reports and initiated an internal debate on previous findings in light of more recent developments in the analysis region. A report on this discussion and review is presented here, entitled NAFTA and the Lessons of U.S - Mexican Trade Relations." The Institute hopes that its studies and other activities will contribute to building a stronger foundation for international trade and investment policy, particularly as new initiatives for expanding trade in the Americas including the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and including the countries of Central America into an enlarged NAFTA area are considered. Yukio Tada President Sunrock Institute 3

Executive Summary Conclusions 1. The political and economic conditions which preceded NAFTA and secured its success have changed in all three North American countries. FTAA will require even greater political will and compromise to overcome existing trade and economic disparities. The demonstrated success of NAFTA can be a useful tool in emphasizing the potential gains from greater trade liberalization throughout the Americas. 2. The lessons of NAFTA (rapid growth from increased investment and intraindustry trade, increased political and economic inter-action between participants, persistent economic gaps and income disparities between and within member countries, reforms in different sectors) must be further analyzed and understood to benefit the future talks on FTAA. 3. As it will embrace a much more diverse region in all respects, the FTAA will require a new effort on the part of public and private supporters to ensure its adoption and successful implementation. Recommendations 1. A new "Washington Consensus" may be required The financial crisis in Argentina, as well as persistent economic and political difficulties in other Latin American countries (Ecuador, Venezuela) have already undermined public support for the so-called "Washington Consensus." In order to avoid a complete rejection of the more beneficial aspects of the Consensus, a review of its policies is in order, with a view to reforming elements which may no longer apply or which are not generating the desired result. 4

2. New US-Mexico Consensus is required The September 11th attacks and the Bush Administration's focus on the antiterrorism campaign have diverted attention away from crucial bilateral issues with Mexico. In addition, the US recession and its impact on Mexico have further eroded public and political interest in addressing problems which persist in relations between the two countries. A new effort by governments and private entities in both countries should be undertaken to ensure that previous momentum is not lost entirely. 3. Public approach is inadequate - private sector involvement must continue The greatest benefits from NAFTA and other trade agreements in the Americas have been felt by the private sector and workers in growth companies and sectors. The private sector, including business and non-governmental organizations, must remain engaged in promoting further trade liberalization. 4. Broad participation from the private sector and NGOs is desirable particularly in Central America as the first step of FTAA The possible expansion of NAFTA to include the countries of Central America has already been discussed by governments and public policy experts throughout the region. Improving the economies of Central America and Southern Mexico through increased investment, trade, and integration, would help build a strong foundation for the general expansion of trade benefits as a result of the FTAA. In addition to NAFTA based private sector and NGOs, Japanese multinationals have historically supported the integration and development of the Central American region. Such involvement should continue and expand. 5

NAFTA and the Lessons of U.S.-Mexican Trade Relations The NAFTA Success Story As one leading observer in Washington recently stated about NAFTA, the most important thing about the "NAFTA issue" is that it is not an "issue" anymore. In the early 1990s, the North American Trade Agreement was among the hottest topics in the three capitals of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, and many careers of politicians were decided (or at least judged) on the basis of their position on trade in general, and NAFTA in particular. Every interest group in Washington had a position on NAFTA -- pro-business groups, labor organizations, environmentalists, lobbyists. A simple search of the Internet for articles and position papers on NAFTA reveals volumes of papers published up to 1994, the year the agreement entered into force. As the years progress, however, the mountain of publications begins to dwindle. In 2001, when NAFTA has been discussed, it has been more for its importance for future trade agreements, and not because of any controversy or question as to its merits. The simple reason for the disappearance of NAFTA as an "issue" from most political discussions is its clear success. The statistics of trade speak for themselves, and can be appreciated by even the least trade knowledgeable of observers. In 1990, when negotiations for NAFTA began, exports among the three North American countries totaled $229.9 billion. By 1999, they had increased on an average of 10.9% annually to $585.1 billion, double the rate of export growth of the three countries to the rest of the world. More significantly, Mexico's exports to the United States jumped from $18.4 billion in 1990 to $111 billion in 1999, while imports also increased from $20 billion in 1990 to $87 billion in 1999. In 1997, Mexico surpassed Japan as the second largest market for U.S. goods and services, after Canada. Today, exports to Canada and Mexico account for nearly one-third of total U.S. exports, while both Canada and Mexico export over 80 percent of their goods and services to the United States, deepening a trend toward dependency on U.S. economic well-being that has worried some observers in recent years. Indeed, it has been calculated that nearly 30 percent of Mexico's GDP is dependent on the U.S. market and its absorption of Mexican products. 6

Perhaps most visibly, the loudest alarm over NAFTA sounded by opponents in the early 1990s, namely that U.S. employment would drop as manufacturers fled the country for cheaper labor in Mexico (a fear most famously encouraged by former independent U.S. presidential candidate Ross Perot in 1994, who warned that a "loud sucking sound" of American jobs pouring out of the country would be the result if NAFTA was approved), did not materialize. In fact, largely due to the rapid economic growth of the 1990s, but also partly due to NAFTA, the number of jobs created between 1994 and 2000 was around 15 million, while the number of workers actually seeking support for jobs lost due to relocation of firms under official NAFTA-mandated assistance programs was only about 100,000 over the six and one-half years of the life of the FTA. The agreement, which itself was the culmination of years of reforms begun in Mexico in the late 1980s and the gradual increase in trade between the U.S. and Mexico, has brought about a spectacular increase in trade and investment between all three of the NAFTA participants, and has helped cement the opening of the Mexican economy. Since 1994, the network of commerce, financial ties, and communications between Canada, Mexico, and the United States has strengthened and deepened. Most importantly for Mexico, it helped to diversify the country's source of export earnings away from petroleum, which accounted for 72 percent of exports in 1981, to only 5.5 percent in 1998. In that year, four years after the implementation of NAFTA, 90 percent of export earnings were from manufactured goods. NAFTA, of course, cannot claim to be the sole engine of the impressive growth in trade flows in North America. The benefits from the Uruguay Round of the GATT improved trade conditions for all of its participants, and the rapid economic growth and productivity improvements in the U.S. market in the 1990s would have been of direct benefit to its closest neighbors even without a free trade agreement. However, most analysts and observers now agree, that NAFTA signaled the beginning of a new stage in relations between the three North American countries in general, and the U.S. and Mexico in particular. Of a more fundamental nature, what was negotiated as purely a trade agreement has had a profound impact on non-trade relations between the U.S. and its partners, again, in particular Mexico. Because of the sweeping nature of NAFTA and its impact on the type and scope of 7

commercial relations among its participant countries, new relationships have developed between government representatives and the broad spectrum of non-governmental organizations, including consumer protection groups, environmentalists, organized labor, and business. In less measurable ways, the success of NAFTA has also begun to remove the psychological and cultural barriers to greater inter-action between the wealthier and less affluent parts of North America, building trust through the stability of predictable trade rules and frequency of contact. The broad impact of NAFTA beyond just trade relations has already prompted several studies in Washington on how the agreement might be expanded to embrace integration issues on par with those already in place in the European Union. While North America is certainly a long way from adopting its own "Maastricht Treaty", and many observers question whether such a "convergence" in North America is possible or even desirable, the fact that books are already being published by highly regarded think tanks in the United States on the topic of "what is next for NAFTA" is a strong statement of confidence in the results and future prospects of the North American trade relationship. Now that the "issue" of North American trade has been largely shown to be a success, the benefits of the expanded trading relationship between the participants, particularly the U.S. and Mexico, is being examined in a broader light: how to expand integration, encourage convergence of living standards, and increase commerce for the benefit of the economies involved. The Mexican Agenda Examining the future course of NAFTA, and how it will be affected by current polices of the new Mexican Administration under President Vicente Fox, can be facilitated by a brief review of Mexican trade and "North American" policy pre-nafta. One of the reasons explaining the extraordinary success and impact of the NAFTA agreement for Mexico is its foundation in a reform campaign which began several years before negotiations on NAFTA commenced. NAFTA in its present form could not have included Mexico to the extent it now does without the decade of policies which preceded it. Following the crushing debt crisis of the early 1980s in Mexico, the administration under President Salinas chose to follow an economic policy course fundamentally different from most of modern Mexican history. The debt crisis exposed the inefficiencies and 8

poor governance of the Mexican economy as a whole, demonstrating the limitations of previous attempts to protect Mexico from competition from the outside. Beginning in 1988, the Salinas administration initiated a series of reforms to open the previously closed Mexican economy, seeking increased foreign investment and the opportunity to access markets and, through increased exports, improve the social well-being of Mexicans. The reforms were quite successful. The agenda was broad: reductions in tariffs, removing limitations on foreign investment, improving fiscal discipline, and initiating political reforms to open up the government after decades of one-party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Trade and foreign direct investment responded well to the reforms. The proportion of GDP earned from trade tripled from 19.7 percent in 1983 to 58.7 percent in 1999. Annual FDI flows began rising sharply from 1990, starting from a base of $2.6 billion in that year, reaching $10.9 billion in 1994. After the implementation of NAFTA, annual levels of FDI have risen, on average, by $10.2 billion, or nearly 127 percent above the previous four-year period. The reforms had a profound impact on trade liberalization -- in 1993 average Mexican tariffs stood at 10 percent, 2.5 times those of the United States. By 1999, under NAFTA, Mexican tariff levels had fallen to 2 percent, and other barriers to imports had been eliminated. The implementation of these opening measures was critical to the success of the NAFTA concept. The pursuit of market liberalization policies in Mexico City coincided with like-minded administrations in Washington and Ottawa, under President Reagan and Prime Minister Mulroney, and was critical in developing what was originally a U.S.- Canadian free trade agreement into the much broader NAFTA that followed. The unprecedented step taken by the Salinas administration to turn an historically perceived "problem" -- the huge U.S. market next door and its potentially overwhelming impact on smaller economies -- into an opportunity, helped set the stage for the success of NAFTA. New Issues of NAFTA The impressive "NAFTA effect" on trade flows and investment has already been referenced in this paper, but trade statistics alone cannot fully illustrate the depth of the changes which have arisen as a result of Mexico's new openness to global and North American markets. The 9

changes have been positive, for the most part, but the pace of economic change in the country has also aggravated some existing problems and raised the importance of finding solutions to them. One of the most profound impacts on Canada-Mexico-US trade was the increase in intra-industry trade, or trade between companies working together to produce a single product or group of products in the same sector. Firms in all three countries are now increasingly acting as coproducers rather than competitors. A market of North American no longer national production networks has arisen, capitalizing on the competitive characteristics each single national market can provide. In the case of Mexico, the low cost of labor has encouraged many northern companies to relocate some or all of their production lines in the south. This occurrence has become the most visible in the auto industry, which now accounts for some 40 percent of North American trade. For Mexico, automobiles and their parts make up one fifth of total exports, and nearly two-thirds of cars made in Mexico now go to the United States. The increase in cross-border intra-industry ties has surely brought many advantages in price competition and productivity, but it has also increased scrutiny of transportation issues, mainly the difficulties sometimes experienced in production when borders impede contact. This problem was made clearly evident in the weeks following the September 11th attacks on the United States, when increased border controls disrupted auto manufacturing flows between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. NAFTA and, more recently, the slowing of the U.S. economy in 2001, has also highlighted another concern in Canada and Mexico, namely the dependence of these two countries on the market of their large neighbor. While the U.S. was growing rapidly during the 1990s, both Canada and Mexico felt the greatest benefits. The slow-down in U.S. growth has, conversely, hit these two markets first, and recovery, when it does occur, will largely depend on what happens in the United States. Because of the impact of the U.S. downturn on the Mexican and Canadian economies, the issue of convergence and reducing the negative impact of economic dependency is being raised more often in all three capitals. Many think tanks have begun a stronger push to examine new ways to deepen North American trade and economic ties, to limit remaining barriers to commerce and improve the effectiveness of the continental market. A group of eminent American and Mexican policy experts, for example, recently called for the establishment of a North American Customs Union, with a common 10

external tariff, to increase integration. The rapid growth in trade and the economic benefits enjoyed by companies taking advantage of NAFTA's opening has not reached all of the citizens of North America. In Mexico particularly, the expansion of commercial ties with the U.S. and Canada has exacerbated the already large gap in wages between the country's wealthiest and poorest citizens and regions. Several studies conducted in Mexico since 1994 have pointed out that NAFTA has widened the social and economic gap in Mexico, where production is concentrated in a handful of states, most of them in the north and around the capital of Mexico City. A study on foreign investment flows by Mexico's Center for Economic Teaching and Research (CIDE) found that 90 percent of the $54 billion in FDI made in Mexico between 1995 and 2000 went to only four states: three in the north (Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, and Baja California) and one in the west (Jalisco). Six southern states of Mexico received only 0.7 percent of this investment. The boom on the northern border has not been reproduced in the south, which suffers from poor infrastructure and few links for trade with the more prosperous NAFTA members. The social gap has become a focus of the new Fox Administration in Mexico. The reduction of trade barriers has also inflamed another persistent problem in U.S.-Mexican relations migration, legal and illegal. While trade booms between the two countries, net wages in Mexico have continued to slump (outside of the northern states), and the net exodus of Mexican migrants to the north has increased to an estimated 1.8 million between 1995 and 2000. While new economic opportunities were created in Mexico in part due to the opening of NAFTA, the continued existence of a huge gap in earnings between the U.S. and Mexico, and the U.S. economy's need for low-wage laborers, means that the push to migrate northward has not abated. The growth in migration has frustrated policymakers in both countries, particularly in the United States. In the assessment of numerous policy experts in the U.S., if Mexican growth patterns continue, even at a slower pace, and if the benefits of trade are able to reach the poorest regions of Mexico, the pace of migration over the next 15 or 20 years should slow considerably. In the near term, however, both governments are under pressure from numerous directions to reexamine migration policy and seek a longer-term solution. 11

Future Trade Options Today, Mexico has capitalized on its benefits from NAFTA and has attempted to further increase its trade ties to the global market. Economic growth and the raising of living standards through market openness and access have become the foundation of Mexican policies. Since NAFTA, Mexico has been among the most aggressive free trade advocates in the world, concluding numerous agreements with partners in all markets. After free trade agreements with many Latin American neighbors in the 1990s (including Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Nicaragua), Mexico signed a similar treaty with the European Union in 2000, which in 1999 received 6.5 percent of Mexico's exports. The principal reason for such a growth in trade agreements seems to be the desire of the Mexican government to diversify its market while increasing net volumes of trade. The success of the explosion in Mexican trade has impacted many levels. While the principal benefactors are firms and businesses in the NAFTA countries, the increase in trade and market openness has benefited multinational firms operating in the NAFTA area as well. Japanese firms with established traditions in trading in the U.S. and Mexico, for example, have seen their business in these countries increase substantially. This rise in trade has led such firms to raise their profile in the region. Japanese multinationals have been, and will continue to be, key players in trade throughout the Americas, and will act as supporters of integration efforts in the future. The clearest indicator of trade's influence on Mexico has been its rise to seventh place in global trade volume. Moreover, the experience of successfully concluding free trade agreements with so many partners has given the Mexican bureaucracy an edge over many of its neighbors, a factor which has strengthen Mexico's hand in preliminary talks over the "ultimate" trade agreement -- the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). On the face of it, the FTAA seems a natural extension of Mexico's decade-long policy of economic opening. The political atmosphere which converged so fortuitously for NAFTA in the 1990s gained ground again in 2000, when the U.S. led efforts to increase the pace of FTAA negotiations, with the aim of concluding talks by 2005. Mexico supported this effort. Observers question, however, how deep the support for FTAA runs in Mexican political circles, because they feel that Mexico may be reluctant to 12

lose the competitive advantage it now enjoys in so many markets through bilateral agreements, if they were to be replaced by a "universal" FTAA granting its neighbors in Latin America the same access to North America as it now enjoys almost exclusively. The experience of seven years of NAFTA will surely be critical in any success of the FTAA, and it is unlikely that any pan-american agreement could have realistically been discussed without the success of the North American component for comparison. The future of the FTAA, however, will depend on the same force of political will and openness which advanced the cause of NAFTA before it. This factor begs the question of how the political agenda has changed in Mexico, and in the United States, as a result of NAFTA. As stated previously, the North American Free Trade Agreement's impact has extended its reach far beyond commerce and markets. In the United States and Canada, the "habit" of increased trade with their southern neighbor has deepened economic ties between companies and related organizations, has made political inter-action more frequent, and has reshaped popular views of Mexico in profound ways. South of the border, the economic restructuring from new trade relations and the spirit of openness which was strengthened by NAFTA have continued to transform the economic and political landscape. The political reforms set in motion in the early 1990s and the increased prosperity of parts of Mexico as a result of economic gains helped to bring about the most visible example of political change in the country -- the election of the first non- PRI President, Vicente Fox, in mid-2000. Fox's election was greeted with intense optimism and very high expectations among Mexicans as well as internationally, and the newly elected President sought early on to capitalize on this support and present new initiatives to solve persistent problems. After his election, President Fox adopted an ambitious political agenda to advance Mexican interests in many areas. The principal target in foreign affairs was a fundamental change in U.S.-Mexican relations, capitalizing on the positive experience of NAFTA, and establishing a new partnership between the two countries in many areas. The timing of Fox's agenda coincided well with the election in Washington of President George W. Bush, whose Administration stated early on that Mexico was to become a new priority in American foreign policy. 13

The Fox agenda for North American relations has centered on improving the climate of trust between the U.S. and Mexico, with the aim of increasing integration through even greater market access. Members of the Fox Administration have been strong proponents of discussions in the U.S. and Mexico of a customs union for the continent, as well as other measures seen as accelerating economic convergence. Topping the list of priorities, however, is the issue of migration. During several meetings with President Bush, and in other appearances before American audiences, President Fox has used the issue of open migration to prod a discussion on fundamental change in the way the U.S. views Mexico. The Mexicans have long argued that freer borders and legalization of the millions of Mexicans now working in the U.S. would build trust and benefit both countries. Since his election, Fox's position has been supported by a broad coalition of business and, most interestingly, American labor organizations, which now argue that legalizing such a large pool of low-cost labor would be good for the American economy in general. In his most recent trip to Washington, in early September, 2001, Fox's cause was gaining an ever wider audience of support, within academic and think tank communities and, most importantly, in Congress. Also high on Fox's agenda was the reduction of the wage gap between the north and south of Mexico, which, as stated earlier, has only grown as a result of NAFTA's concentrated benefits for the northern border states. The new Mexican government enthusiastically backed a plan to bring new investment and development to Mexico's southern regions. By endorsing an ambitious program called the "Plan Puebla-Panamá" which aims to develop infrastructure and investment in southern Mexico and Central America President Fox breathed life into an effort which many Central American governments and international financial institutions have supported for years, but which did not receive broad endorsement until the Mexican "heavyweight" joined the plan. The Bush Administration, for its part, placed relations with Mexico at the top of its foreign agenda upon entering the White House. The first foreign trip by President Bush was to Mexico and not, as is tradition, to Canada. Bush's long established ties to Mexican issues, through his base in Texas, and his ideological similarities to President Fox, assured the primacy of Mexico on Washington's agenda. On a broader scale, the Bush White House also promised to devote greater attention and resources to 14

Latin American issues in general, moving early on to support the FTAA project, and promising to engage in the Western Hemisphere with new energy. The goals and promises of both Presidents in the U.S. and Mexico, however strongly voiced, have progressed with difficulty since they were announced in early 2000. In the area of trade, President Bush has remained unsuccessful in securing a broader mandate from the U.S. Congress (in the form of "trade promotion authority") with which he could enter credible negotiations for the FTAA. Numerous Latin American partners, principally Brazil, have made it clear that, without such authority from Congress, they would be reluctant to begin substantive talks on such a broad agreement. Washington's Latin American policies have also been hampered by partisan differences. To date, the Administration is still unable to get approval for its leading Western Hemisphere policy appointee. The candidate, Otto Reich, a Cuban- American veteran of the Reagan Administration, is strongly opposed by Democrats now in control of the Senate, who fear his conservative views will not serve American policy in the region. Similarly, in Mexico, Fox's aggressive agenda is still largely unfulfilled. After arriving in the Presidency with record-high levels of public support, Fox's momentum has gradually stalled. The Mexican Congress remains very divided, and the losing PRI party has, since its stunning loss of the Presidency in 2000, regrouped and found new strength in opposition. Fox has been criticized even by some supporters as remaining too detached from the political battleground, and the number of actual legislative initiatives coming from the President has been very low. Add to these concerns the decline in Mexican economic growth as the U.S. recession sets in. Given the great expectations most Mexicans had of government under Fox at the end of 2000, it is not surprising that the President's approval ratings have steadily declined over 2001. Finally, and most significantly, there is the September 11th attack on the United States. Only one week before, President Fox had visited Washington and was received with extreme warmth and expectation. The President toured think tanks and media, espousing his vision for a new partnership in North America, receiving broad indications of support in Washington circles for a new effort to approach migration and drug trafficking issues. After the terrorist attacks, Fox's visit is but a distant 15

memory. The terrorist threat, and the campaign against it, have diverted the attention of the White House away from virtually all other issues, and U.S. national security now calls for more border protection, not less. The Fox agenda, so dependent on new openness, does not fit into a Washington agenda which must now focus on increased vigilance and security. While Washington political observers now discuss the extent to which foreign policy concerns other than the fight against terrorism have been neglected, it is clear that the global anti-terrorism campaign has pushed Latin American policy concerns to the second tier. The State Department remains without its Latin American policy chief, and little guidance is coming from Washington on how it views the many potential "hot spots" developing to the south: Argentina suffers from financial crisis, Colombian peace talks with guerillas founder, and Venezuelan President Chavez seems to have increased his populist, anti-american position. Mexico's image as a partner was also certainly not helped by the initial wavering of public and government sentiment in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks. Washington received an overwhelmingly supportive response from allies in Europe and Asia, while some political circles in Mexico chided their Foreign Minister for being too openly and uncritically sympathetic to American policy in the wake of the attacks. Both governments have, however, assured that the issues raised by the two Administrations in the U.S. and Mexico at the start of 2001 remain priority concerns, and the momentum achieved in the months before September in addressing them will not likely dissipate completely. For the foreseeable future, however, "North American" affairs cannot receive the full attention or political focus they enjoyed prior to September, and the main task of the Mexican government and its supporters in Washington will be how and when to seek a revival of interest in addressing these issues. Even as the U.S. government devotes its attention toward the global anti-terrorism campaign, events in Latin America will press on the Bush Administration's agenda in 2002. The crisis in Argentina shows no sign of resolution, and fears are growing that disillusionment with the "Washington Consensus" economic policies will spread beyond Buenos Aires and encourage populism of the Chavez sort in other parts of Latin America. As for trade, the calendar is ambitious and will require greater diplomatic efforts and attention from all governments concerned. The 16

Bush Administration had, before September 11th, indicated it would like to open FTAA talks before the end of 2002, and also signaled a desire to conclude more open trade talks with Chile and Central America. Meeting these goals, and ensuring that crises in the region do not undermine the efforts and progress of previous years, means that "Western Hemisphere" policy will place greater demands on Washington in 2002. Sources consulted for this report include: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), CSIS Mexico Project: New Horizons in U.S.-Mexico Relations: A Report of the U.S.-Mexico Binational Council Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Institute for International Economics (IIE) The Heritage Foundation The Inter-American Dialogue U.S. Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration United States-Mexico Chamber of Commerce Pastor, Robert A., "Toward A North American Community" 17