Trucks enter Laredo, Texas, after crossing from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, Jan. 12, 2019. Congress gave final approval to President Donald Trump’s revised North American Free Trade Agreement on Jan. 16, 2020, as House lawmakers prepared to read charges of high crimes and misdemeanors on the Senate floor. (Meredith Kohut/The New York Times)
MEREDITH KOHUT, STR / NYTOver one year into the COVID-19 pandemic’s disastrous effects on the United States and the world, it is crucial to assess how we as a country can continue to pursue a path toward national restoration. However, we must not be insular in this process, only looking inward at our all too polarized domestic political environment. Instead, we should also recognize that we will become a stronger and more just country serving all our citizens by strengthening our economic and national security interests with our partners and allies. Accordingly, one of the opportunities we should seize is to embrace our relations with our nearest neighbors of Mexico and Canada and create a more prosperous North America thereby enhancing the United States’ domestic and global potential.
Our citizenry and policymakers must be clear-eyed about the challenges we face in an increasingly competitive and globalized system. While after WWII the United States constituted about one-half of the world’s GDP, today our country represents less than one-fourth of global GDP while the economies of key players such as China and India keep growing at a consequential pace. In this context, to keep up, the United States should adopt an international leadership role that does not seek dominance but includes partners and allies in a manner that consolidates the power and influence of like-minded states that abide by democratic principles and human rights. Such coalitions would pose a much more serious challenge to adversaries, particularly authoritarian regimes. Central to this mission should be pursuing the comparative advantages we enjoy with our neighbors in North America.
North America has the potential to be the most powerful regional grouping in the world. Synergy with Canada and Mexico is critical to our country’s geopolitical destiny and could diminish concerns over an emerging China, for example, thereby achieving economic and social prosperity and enhanced security. Together, the United States, Mexico and Canada comprise an enormous market of 500 million people and over $24 trillion dollars of combined GDP with vast energy resources. Canada and Mexico are among America’s top three trading partners, with Mexico poised to take the number one spot in the coming years.
This tripartite alliance constitutes a formidable manufacturing platform, comparable and even superior to any other in the world. As a result of NAFTA and its successor, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), labor markets, companies, supply chains, laws and standards have become increasingly integrated across North America’s borders.
Even with more dynamic cross-border relationships in North America, this is not to say that a panacea lies ahead. Many challenges await us, not least of which is the current crisis of migrants at the southern border.
The United States will not prosper unless it operates from a very strong national base. There is much to do on this score. Globalization and technological change have produced winners and losers. We must also address the inequalities in our society. Doing so will require strong economic growth as well as job creation and higher wages for many deprived Americans. Only with a strong economy and a strong socio-political base can we successfully pursue our foreign policy and national security interests. A focused pursuit of a North American strategy by the Biden Administration can do much to reach these goals.
Djerejian is director of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. A former U.S. ambassador to Syria and to Israel and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, his career in the U.S. Foreign Service spanned the administrations of eight presidents from John F. Kennedy to William J. Clinton.
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