What the NAFTA Fight Teaches about Trade Policy Politicization and Legitimation

Abstract

Trade policy has been the principal instrument for the promotion of a neoliberal model of regional economic integration in North America. This chapter explores the struggle over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — almost certainly the most intense fight over trade policy in the history of its three member states. My aim is to explore what light this high point of popular contention can shed on two of the central concerns of this volume. First, why are trade liberalization agreements (and regional economic integration processes) highly politicized in some periods and not in others? Second, what factors determine whether key actors, the general public and particular elements within it see a particular trade agreement (or change in the level or type of economic integration) as legitimate?