Abstract

RUIZ NAPOLES, Pablo. Who won and who lost with NAFTA? Results of bilateral trade Mexico-USA on production, employment and income distribution. El trimestre econ [online]. 2021, vol.88, n.352, pp.1099-1120.  Epub Dec 13, 2021. ISSN 2448-718X.  https://doi.org/10.20430/ete.v88i352.1272.

Since the beginning of his administration in 2017, the then President of the United States Donald Trump expressed his displeasure with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He argued that it had been unfair to the U. S. economy. Thus, the administration pressed for a renegotiation of the treaty in the second part of that same year.

Although there have been many studies of NAFTA, few of them utilized an input-output model. This type of analysis allows us to measure the impacts of foreign trade flows of each economy through all the sectors of its structure. Here, we used an input-output model for the U. S. and Mexico to analyze the impacts of their bilateral trade on income and labor in each economy, in 1992 and 2014. The results show that while Mexico benefited more in labor and value-added generated by bilateral trade with the U. S., the distribution of value-added gains was more favorable to U. S. businesses than to Mexican workers.

Keywords : Free trade agreement; input-output; exports; employment; value-added.