Negotiating NAFTA: Explaining the Outcome in Culture, Textiles, Autos, and Pharmaceuticals

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom and The History of Fort St. Joseph, and the co-author of
Invisible and Inaudible in Washington: American

Negotiating NAFTA developed out of Maryse Robert’s doctoral thesis.
Using four case studies—culture, textiles, autos, and
pharmaceuticals—Robert answers five questions: (i) What counts as
winning and losing in a negotiation? (ii) How does one define
“resources” in a trade negotiation? (iii) What tactics can produce a
“win”? (iv) How does one take advantage of contextual factors? (v)
Are there any “linkages” among issues in a trade negotiation? The
book is an attempt to explain why asymmetrical negotiations need not be
an unconditional triumph for the strongest party.

Robert notes the obvious. Because of its size and wealth, the United
States was in a better position than either Canada or Mexico to
determine the outcome of the NAFTA talks. Nevertheless, Canada and
Mexico, she says, did not do badly if one compares the outcome with
their goals. Determined to protect Canadian cultural industries, even to
continue the status quo, the Canadian negotiators refused to discuss
culture, and, at the end of the talks, the Canadian government withheld
its signature. Ottawa gambled successfully that the first Bush
administration was so anxious for some sort of agreement that it would
capitulate before the Republican convention began. For their part, the
Mexicans would have signed almost anything. Normally, the United States
might have dictated the section on auto manufacturing since General
Motors, Ford, and Chrysler all had their headquarters in that country.
Ottawa and Mexico City met the challenge by forming alliances with the
car companies. They found that GM, Ford, and Chrysler wanted to maintain
the Auto Pact, and they wanted to keep European and Asian companies at a
disadvantage within North America. Robert also credits the competence of
the civil servants at the negotiating table.

Sources include a wide range of government documents and secondary
literature from the three countries in the three NAFTA
languages—English, Spanish, and French. (After all, Quebec’s
provincial government had significant input into decisions of the
Government of Canada.) Robert has demonstrated a formidable knowledge of
Canada, the United States, and Mexico, as well as of NAFTA.