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The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

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The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
The North American Free Trade Agreement is an agreement which created a trade block between the three largest countries in North America; Canada, United States and Mexico. On January 1, 1994 the agreement entered into force.1 This agreement sets the regulations for international trade and investment between the three NAFTA member countries. NAFTA’s purpose was to promote trade on many goods that originated and are traded between its members, by eradicating trade barriers over a period of 15 years. It provides the rules for commercial activities in the NAFTA countries by reducing or eliminating tariffs on certain goods. Over 30 groups and committees have been set up to implement and administer NAFTA. 2 From the time when NAFTA came into effect, …show more content…
An explanation for this, is that China, India and Russia are diversifying from U.S. Treasury securities, frequently investing in gold.11 Here we will compare the currency of the Canadian currently in circulation by Canada’s government to the USD. The Canadian dollar, known as C$, was the 7th most traded currency in the world in 2007.12 The C$ has historically tended to move moderately simultaneously with the USD. However in recent years, the C$ has had dramatic fluctuations compared to the USD and have a tendency to correlate with shifts in oil prices due to Canada’s considerable oil exports. As can be seen on the graph, in November 2007 the C$ was at a modern-day high as China made the announcement that it would back away from its 1.43 trillion USD foreign exchange reserve with the U.S. dollar. The Bank of Canada cut its interest rates to insure that the C$ retreated to a lower level due to the fact that the United States of America is Canada’s main exporting …show more content…
The Mexican peso also known as MXN is the 12th most traded currency in the world in 200714 and exceedingly the most traded currency in Latin America.

11 12

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSPEK4365020080917 http://www.bis.org/publ/rpfxf07t.pdf pg. 11 13 http://www.google.com/finance?q=USDCAD 14 http://www.bis.org/publ/rpfxf07t.pdf pg.

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