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Regional Economic Integration

NAFTA Flag by Alex Covarrubias. This image is licensed under the creative commons attribute2.5

Regional economic integration is when exists a trade agreement between countries within a region that agree to lower tariffs and regulations with each other; in some cases they may agree to trade some items exclusively. This encourages investment within the trade zone and helps businesses expand easier and at a lower lost.

The European Union is a great example of the regional economic integration, the European Union was created in the 1950’s, to bring together nations that collide with each other to facilitate their economic and political relationships. The EU has developed a single market through a standardized system of laws that apply in all member states. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital. An additional goal is to enact legislation in justice and home affairs, as well as maintain common policies on trade, agriculture, fisheries, and regional development. Moreover, the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation has done their part to enhance this movement. They joined a group of 21 countries that used to be member economies that work together to promote free trade and economic cooperation throughout the Asian pacific region. The Asian pacific economic cooperation was established in 1989 to promote advancement, raise living standards, education and promote sustainable economic growth among Asian pacific countries. However, The North America free trade agreement did not stay behind. NAFTA became part of an agreement that let Canada, North America and Mexico to eliminate tariffs, expanding trade agriculture, textiles, and automobile parts.

Why Should We Care?

Since regional economic integration creates favorable trading conditions for the countries involved in trade agreements it encourages them to trade with other countries that never would have caught their eye before. According to the united states trade representative 6,000 new jobs are created in the U.S. for every billion dollars’ worth of exports. With the expansion of markets comes an increase In jobs in member countries due to favorable business performance.

Goods produced by countries in the U.S. free trade areas are often time less expensive than those made at home. Many U.S. businesses have turned their game up and increased the quality of their products or outsourced some of the parts to offer a better quality and/or lower priced product.

Examples Here in Utah

According to the Department of Commerce international trade administration in 2015 55,795 U.S. jobs were supported by goods exports from Utah. In 2016 Utah’s exports totaled 12.1Billion Utah’s top five export markets are United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Canada, Mexico and China. The U.S. currently has 14 free trade agreements with 20 countries and of Utah’s exports 26 percent was with FTA countries.

Utah and NAFTA

The United states Canada and Mexico make up NAFTA the north American free trade agreement NAFTA has done a lot for UTAH. Imports and exports between the state of UTAH and Canada and Mexico totaled over 7 billion in 2016 and have created more than 125000 jobs in Utah alone. Utah Farmers depend a lot on foreign trade for their incomes and many industries in Utah are dependent on the imports they receive from these countries as well like safety fuses, gold, medical, surgical and dental equipment.

References

LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS

Module 7: “Got NAFTA?” … Regional Economic Integration by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 / A derivative from the original work