How to improve NAFTA

IN 1994 America’s economy was barely three years into its longest post-war expansion. Oil production fell to its lowest level for 40 years. Shares in a Steve Jobs-less Apple could be picked up for little more than a dollar; Jeff Bezos left his job at a hedge fund to set up a new kind of retailer, after learning of the fast-growing use of the internet. At the start of that year the North America Free-Trade Agreement came into force. It committed America, Canada and Mexico to eliminate most of the tariffs on goods between them within a decade.NAFTA was controversial from the start. Its critics have grown louder over time, despite its success in boosting trade and investment. Weeks before his election as president, Donald Trump called NAFTA “the worst trade deal maybe ever” and said he would junk it. In April he relented: a realisation that lots of Trump-voting states rely heavily on trade with Mexico and Canada may have swayed him. Instead, on August 16th, trade representatives of the three signatories gathered in Washington, DC, to renegotiate the pact. Whatever their provenance, such talks are an opportunity. A deal agreed on in the early 1990s is ill-fitted for a much-changed economic landscape. Indeed there is a real possibility that Mr Trump, far from killing free trade in North America, might make it freer.