Skip to main content

News Tip: NAFTA Agreement a ‘Good Thing,’ But Mostly Unchanged, Expert Says

A revised North America free-trade agreement was announced Monday

A revised North America free-trade agreement was announced Monday.  

  • Quotes:
    The agreement -- being hailed as a triumph for President Trump -- is a good thing, but it needs to be seen not as a major departure, but as a modest revision that largely preserves the core of the original,” says Frederick Mayer, a professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.

    “True, there are some changes: Higher rules of origin and provisions regarding wages in the auto sector, more open dairy markets in Canada, an updated intellectual property chapter, a much-curtailed investor dispute process, and somewhat stronger labor rights provisions in Mexico. Significant, but far from a radical overhaul.”
     
    “Having portrayed NAFTA as a disaster it wasn’t, President Trump now claims that he has rescued it. A good story, but wildly overblown. If you thought that NAFTA was good policy then, and that it has, on balance, served us well in the intervening years, you should be happy that we have largely stayed on course."
     

  • Bio:
    Frederick “Fritz” Mayer, professor of public policy, political science and environment at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, is also the director of POLIS, the Center for Political Leadership, Innovation and Service. He researches the role of narrative in politics and teaches courses on public policy, political analysis and global governance. Mayer is the author of “Narrative Politics: Stories and Collective Action” (Oxford University Press, 2014), and “Interpreting NAFTA: The Art and Science of Political Analysis” (Columbia University Press, 1998).
    https://sanford.duke.edu/people/faculty/mayer-frederick-w
     
  • Archive Interviews -- audio
    -- Podcast Policy 360: https://sanford.duke.edu/articles/sanford-spearheads-new-effort-find-political-common-ground-nc
    -- Radio WUNC http://wunc.org/post/wuncpolitics-podcast-nation-engaged#stream/0 
     
  • For additional comment, contact Frederick Mayer at:
     email Frederick.mayer@duke.edu