Chemonics International

The objective of this paper is to provide a review of the Sanitary and Phytosanitary provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). However, in order to understand the NAFTA it is necessary to understand the history of its negotiation and its relationship with the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSTA) and the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations. The CUSTA negotiations began first, in April 1986. At that time Canada realized that access to its most important trading partner was at risk as a result of protectionist forces in the United States (Warley and Barichello). One manifestation of Canada’s problem was the United States aggressive use of administered protection. Canada’s goal heading into the negotiations was to secure and improve market access to its most important trading partner, thereby obtaining preferred access to the giant United States market. For the United States, the negotiation of the CUSTA signalled to the rest of the world that it was willing to consider regional trade agreements, given what appeared to be a stalemate in launching the next round of multilateral negotiations. The multilateral negotiations finally began in the fall of 1986 and didn’t conclude until December 1993.1 Hence, the negotiation of both the CUSTA and the NAFTA overlapped the multilateral negotiations whose provisions came into effect on January 1, 1995