About Welfare and Competitiveness in North America

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) ensured that Canada, the United States, and Mexico would have the support of regulatory statutes allowing them to coordinate their policies and to take advantage of their complementarities. Fifteen years after the implementation of NAFTA, however, a collective vision on how to improve regional competitiveness in a global context with formidable competitors in Asia and other regions is still pending. Add to this, important challenges such as an economic recession, social inequality, and population dynamics that are fundamentally changing labor markets, not to mention, serious threats against health and the environment. CEDAN’s Program on Competitiveness and Social Wellbeing seeks to offer a space for plural dialogue and analysis that will help to create a North American vision where the three countries can better confront global challenges by optimizing their comparative advantages, and by maximizing their complementarities—all with the aim of improving the wellbeing of their citizens.