The North American Free Trade Agreement was an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States that created a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994, and superseded the 1988 Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Canada. The NAFTA trade bloc formed one of the largest trade blocs in the world by gross domestic product.
Back row, left to right: Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, U.S. President George H. W. Bush, and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, at the initialing of the draft North American Free Trade Agreement in October 1992. In front are Mexican Secretary of Commerce and Industrial Development Jaime Serra Puche, United States Trade Representative Carla Hills, and Canadian Minister of International Trade Michael Wilson.
Obama, Peña Nieto and Harper at the IX North American Leaders' Summit (informally known as the Three Amigos Summit) in Toluca
Former President Enrique Peña Nieto with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and then-President Barack Obama of the United States at the 2016 North American Leaders' Summit
Chrystia Freeland, Luis Videgaray Caso and Rex Tillerson in Mexico City in 2018
Carlos Salinas de Gortari
Videos
Carlos Salinas de Gortari is a Mexican economist and politician with Spanish citizenship who served as the 60th president of Mexico from 1988 to 1994. Affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), earlier in his career he worked in the Secretariat of Programming and Budget, eventually becoming Secretary. He secured the party's nomination for the 1988 general election and was elected amid widespread accusations of electoral fraud.
Carlos Salinas walks through the gardens of the Moncloa Palace with Felipe González in 1989.
Flag of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN)