Just as Americans mutually benefit from voluntary exchange domestically, so can individuals in different countries within the rule of law. A perfect trade agreement would be one sentence that provides no more than a contractual obligation: “There shall be no trade barriers among countries X, Y, and Z.”
The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) recently held an event co-sponsored with The Heritage Foundation that discussed whether Texans gain or lose from the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Panelists included Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar, Dr. David Kreutzer of the Heritage Foundation, and Dr. Vance Ginn of TPPF, with moderator Drew White of TPPF.
NAFTA is an agreement among the U.S., Mexico, and Canada designed to reduce costs of exchange among Americans, Mexicans, and Canadians. While it’s far from a perfect agreement, as more than 1,700 pages pick government winners and losers, data indicates it at least benefits Texas and the energy sector.
In 2016, Texas exports totaled $231.1 billion and imports were $229.3 billion, giving a trade surplus of $1.8 billion. Instead of evaluating a trade deficit versus surplus, consider that people agreeing to each transaction benefit from more than $460 billion in foreign trade.
Texas’ trade total with Mexico resulted in a $10.8 billion trade surplus and with Canada a $4.7 billion trade surplus, so NAFTA contributes to a $15.5 billion trade surplus in a $1.4 trillion economy.
Texans prosper from each individual transaction through overall lower prices and a growing economic pie. Research finds that fewer trade impediments among NAFTA countries helped Texas become economically diversified and more resilient to oil price fluctuations over time.
Moreover, a Texas industry that should support NAFTA is the energy sector. In 2016, Texas exported $37.1 billion in petroleum and coal products, the majority of that sum going to Mexico and Canada.
Critics of NAFTA point to trade imbalances as a reason for dissolving the agreement. This reason can be discounted in the context of the energy sector: the U.S. energy sector had a positive trade surplus with Mexico of $11.5 billion.
The agreement is also credited as a driving force in the North American resurgence in energy production.
North American economies produced a total of 22 million barrels of oil a day in 2016, with the majority produced in the U.S. Although the U.S. is the leading producer of petroleum in the world, we demand six million barrels of oil and related products per day more than we produce. Canadian producers who export about three million barrels a day to the U.S. satisfy the bulk of this excess demand.
NAFTA benefits the construction of natural gas pipelines stretching from the U.S. to Mexico. This helps expand the market for excess natural gas production in the U.S. while allowing Mexicans to convert to cleaner-burning energy production.
Members of the energy sector should support the continuation of NAFTA as well as an updating of the section of the agreement dealing with energy production toward freer trade. If U.S. producers could more freely operate in Mexico, the U.S. energy sector, Texans, and Americans, could prosper more.