WHO: Robert Pastor, director of American University’s Center for North American Studies, served as President Carter’s National Security Advisor for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Pastor has since advised every Democrat presidential candidate on policy issues in the Americas.
Manuel Suarez-Mier interim director of American University’s Center for North American Studies, served as the top economic diplomat in Washington at the time of the negotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
WHAT: Analysis of NAFTA’s successes and failures; recent NAFTA poll taken in Mexico, Canada and U.S.
WHEN: December 18 – Dec. 23; after Jan 2, 2014-ongoing
WHERE: At American University, in-studio, via telephone
Washington, D.C. (December 18, 2013) -- The North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) reaches its 20 year milestone on January 1, 2014. American University’s Center for North American Studies(CNAS)experts, Robert Pastor and Manuel Suarez-Mier, who each played important indirect and direct rolls in NAFTA negotiations for both the United States and Mexico are available to discuss NAFTA’s successes and its disappointments especially following 9/11 and the economic crisis. Both can also speak to reinvigorating NAFTA to compete with other major regional trading blocs.
The Center for North American Studies at American University also commissioned a tri-national public opinion poll in Canada, Mexico, and the United States to measure the publics’ attitudes on cooperation to deepen and broaden relations between the three countries and on ways to deal with contemporary economic and security challenges. The summary and complete results of those three public opinion surveys can be found here.
The poll results are eye-opening in that the public seems far ahead of their governments in wanting a higher level of collaboration over a wider range of issues that have historically been viewed as solely domestic, but have become transnational. The public, in brief, wants the three governments to do more to integrate the three economies and to do that in advance of negotiating new trade agreements with East Asia and Europe rather than afterwards, which is the current policy of the governments.
Recently, CNAS hosted “The NAFTA Promise and the North American Reality: The Gap and How to Narrow It” to chart the future for the region in a world increasingly characterized by three competitive regions––East Asia, the European Union and North America. Complete information is available here in addition to complete video.
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