Negotiating NAFTA, the first time: from scare to scripture

As negotiators meet to hammer out NAFTA 2.0, a former U.S. Embassy official recalls how tough it was to create the original version.
Back row, from left: Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, U.S. president George H.W. Bush, and Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, at the initialling of the draft North American Free Trade Agreement in October 1992. In front are the three countries' respective trade ministers, Mexico's Jaime Serra Puche, the U.S.'s Carla Hills, and Canada's Michael Wilson. Photograph courtesy of the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum
Opinion
BY JOHN STEWART
September 6, 2017
John Stewart spent 20 years as an economist and manager with the United States Embassy in Ottawa. This is the last of two excerpts from his book Strangers with Memories: The United States and Canada from Free Trade to Baghdad, now available from the fall catalogue of 

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