The most striking change in development of nation states in the last year has come from the shift Germany has made back towards an energy strategy that pulls itself away from Russia, seeking to balance traditional energy needs with future environmentally friendly projects. While Germany and much of Europe is still heavily dependant on Russian […]
As Mexico became the first nation to ratify the United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, let’s take a look at what NAFTA was and how the USMCA hopes to improve…
In the mid-1960s, during the height of the American auto industry’s success in Detroit and surrounding border states, the US and Canada developed the Auto Pact. The Auto Pact brought Canada into the thriving industrial base in the northern region of the United States and over the years integrated Canadian and American auto production under […]
After decades of one party rule under the PRI, two standard six year Presidential terms under the PAN and a brisk return to the PRI to remind voters why they ejected them in the first place, Mexicans came out en masse to vote for the ex-mayor of Mexico City, Manuel Lopez Obrador. As the […]
Current negotiations between Canada, Mexico and the United States to revise and modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have been characterized by notable disagreements and heavy demands across parties, as well as threats from US President Donald Trump to exit the current agreement altogether. However, the energy sector – and North American energy […]
Trump’s blunt mercantilism risks pushing Mexico and Canada into China’s arms. Indeed, both countries have expressed interest in signing a deal with Beijing.
Under the idea to “Make America Great Again” the plan is to extract concessions, country by country, wielding U.S. economic power to reduce trade deficits.
Beyond NAFTA, Mexico and Canada could benefit greatly from a boom in the U.S. economy if it is accompanied by wise domestic policy decisions.
In a sharply divided electorate, opposition to free trade is creating an unlikely point of unity between angry voters across the aisle.
This week the leaders of the three NAFTA nations are meeting in Mexico for an opportunity to tune up NAFTA and repair some points of political contention between “Los Tres Amigos.” Much of the media reporting on the meeting has taken a negative approach to the gathering, pointing out points of contention between the three friends. […]
This blog regularly focuses on the foreign policy reverberations of the U.S. energy boom. As discussed in earlier posts (here and here), these include the gradual paring back of U.S. strategic commitments in the Persian Gulf*, the diminution of Russia’s great power aspirations**, as well as a boost to America’s soft-power prospects and global standing. But […]
Latin America is often seen as in the lower echelon of State Department priorities, and many experts think this is appropriate, given the world’s current hotspots. However, Latin Americans are our closest neighbors, much of our immigrant population, and our partners in solving major domestic issues. Christopher Sabatini, Editor-in-Chief of Americas Quarterly, wants the Obama […]
President Obama in his State of the Union address announced that the United States and the European Union would seek out a Free Trade Agreement in order to boost the economy of both regions and help curb the ongoing bouts of recessions. This proposed agreement will be the largest agreement ever formed and comes out […]
“Every day along the world’s busiest border, an expensive and time-consuming pantomime is acted out.” So begins the Economist’s coverage of the trucking agreement recently announced between Mexico and the United States. From that smart opening line the paper slips into an uncharacteristic fit of naïveté, arguing that Mexico stands to chalk major gains from […]
We know that the global banking system is riddled with corruption (‘vulnerable’ to corruption may be more polite), some authored by its own principals, some embraced opportunistically by financial insiders to snatch sudden profits, a great deal ushered into the world’s financial system by bankers in search of the commissions and corporate profits that ‘high net-worth customers’ (in many cases, money launderers) bring in. And sometimes the bad guys exploit legitimate financial service providers. But the question remains, and it turns on the distinction between deregulation and irregularity, between fair play and laissez-faire, between the right of the ‘haves’ to have still more, and the right of the people to real economic protection under the law.
At what point does financial entrepreneurship turn criminal, and how blind an eye is the US prepared to turn toward banking practices that clearly prosper the powerful and imperil the growing ranks of the poor, in the United States and across the world?