Experts Meet at Pardee House to Discuss Future of NAFTA

Experts from Canada, Mexico, and the United States convened at the Pardee Center on March 20 to discuss The Future of NAFTA. NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) was designed to be permanent, but the election of US President Barack Obama, who pledged to assess the impacts of NAFTA, has galvanized thinking about what the future of North American integration should look like.  Rather than thinking about short-term fixes to the agreement, experts at the Pardee Center workshop discussed scenarios for NAFTA and a broader tri-national relationship that would enable long-run prosperity and sustainability.

Pardee Research Fellow Kevin P. Gallagher chaired the meeting and will work with workshop participants to publish a policy report that lays out the group’s assessment and recommendations.  The report will be published in English and Spanish and will form the basis for extensive outreach with policy-makers in the US and Mexico in the autumn of 2009.

Participants in the meeting included:

Robert Stumberg, Georgetown University Law School

Gus Van Harten, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto

Timothy A. Wise, Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University

Kenneth Shadlen, London School of Economics

Enrique Dussel Peters, National Autonomous University of Mexico

Rodolfo Garcia Zamora, National Autonomous University of Zacatecas

Sandra Polaski, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace