The Institutional Impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement

One of the main effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement is that it establishes a series of trilateral and bilateral rules and organizations to channel the broad and complex economic relationship between the three countries of the region. This result can be described as the institutional dimension of the Treaty, which poses new challenges for the administration of Mexico's foreign relations and which, without a doubt, will substantially modify the way in which relations with the United States in particular are conducted. To better understand the institutional impact of NAFTA, a brief historical account is made of the way in which economic relations between Mexico and the United States and between Mexico and Canada had been conducted before the Treaty. These are the purposes of this work with which, in addition to contributing to the dissemination of knowledge about the new institutional mechanisms, it would try to make a first approximation to the impact that the Treaty will have, without a doubt, in the way in which the Mexico's foreign policy towards its northern neighbors.