The Controversial Pivot

In 1994, two political events occurred that would have been inconceivable just five years before: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was launched, and Republicans took control of the U.S. Congress for the first time in 40 years. NAFTA aimed to bind the three North American economies after more than a century in which Mexico and Canada had struggled to keep their distance from the United States. Ironically, at the very moment that Canada and Mexico risked a closer embrace, a new inwa