Envisioning North American Futures: Transnational Challenges and Opportunities - A Proposal for Trialogue and Analysis
Sovereignty
The Pacific Council on International Policy - an independent and non-partisan international leadership forum, based in Los Angeles and rooted in the North American West - proposes to organize a process of structured and sustained exchange among a highly diverse set of decision-makers and opinion-shapers from Mexico, the United States and Canada....
Among the issues to be explored will be the human needs that have not been addressed by free trade; the emergence of transnational cultural and political identities; the roots and consequences of poverty in the region; resource management; macroeconomic policy; employment and income distribution; environmental protection; public health and education; crime and law enforcement; cross-border flows of capital and labor; trade policy and its implementation, including issues of dispute resolution; border management and continental security; the infrastructure for integration; and policy coordination and governance....
Accelerating processes of "silent integration" between Mexico and the United States and to a lesser degree between the United States and Canada - reflecting the forces of geography, communications and markets - have been underway for many years, slowly but surely expanding the demographic and economic connections between the United States and its closest neighbors to the north and south. These processes, in turn, were formalized and reinforced, first by the Canada-United States bilateral trade accord of 1988 and then by the establishment of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)....
The economic growth generated by NAFTA has also had its downside, contrary to prevailing theories of economic integration. There has been something of a "negative convergence" among the NAFTA countries as worker skills, real wages and the income share of the less-advantaged sectors have actually deteriorated in all three nations....
As a result of transnational ties, Mexico and the United States have become socially, politically, culturally and economically intertwined in ways that national governments are only beginning to understand. This intertwining is leading to questions of citizenship, identity, and sovereignty that will pose important questions for policymakers on both sides of the border for generations to come....
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