The NAFTA Agreement

International trade has always been a vital part of a country’s economy and was in fact one of the most important factors that promoted the industrialization of the United States in the first place. Various instances of international trade can be observed throughout the history which helped the world to evolve into its present state, beginning with the traders who formed the Silk Route in the fourteenth and fifteenth century to transport silk, which turned out to not only be very important, economically, but also for the exchange of cultures and ideas. Today, foreign trade is the backbone of our modern, commercial world. Producers and manufacturers in different countries benefit greatly from an extended business sector, as compared to being restricted, and offer inside their nation's boundaries, therefore extending and expanding international trade by the federal government is necessary for businesses inside the US to prosper.
International trade occurs due to lower cost of manufacturing of a product in one country as compared to another, either because of cheap labor or abundance of raw materials needed for production.
Twenty years ago the United States created an agreement including itself, Canada, and Mexico, named NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, to relax the trading regulations and increase trade between itself and its two neighboring countries, along with a long term purpose to create a more competitive global marketplace originating from the North American continent. NAFTA is now the largest free trade agreement in the world with the world’s largest free trade area of 450 million people and a collective economy of over twenty trillion dollars, which is greater than the economic output of the 28 countries in the entire European Union combined (CIA World Factbook). But there has been a prolonged debate on its effectiveness and advantages that lasts even