The U.S., Mexico, and the NAFTA Mess

This event is co-sponsored by
the UW Madison Latin American, Caribbean, and
Iberian Studies Program

Speaker:  Dr. Carol Wise, Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California

At the behest of the Trump administration, the U.S., Canada, and Mexico are set to begin renegotiating NAFTA on August 16, 2017.  U.S. stated objectives are to "modernize" NAFTA; Mexico's only stated goal is to expand North American trade. Does NAFTA need renegotiating? What are the opportunities and inherent risks involved here?  With a focus on the U.S.-Mexico relationship, this talk will explore these questions.

Carol Wise joined the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California in 2002 after spending eight years on the Faculty at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. She specializes in international political economy and development, with an emphasis on Latin America. She has written widely on trade integration, exchange rate crises, institutional reform, and the political economy of market restructuring in the region. Wise just completed a book-length project---Dragonomics: The Rise of China in Latin America---which analyzes the rapid and remarkable ties that have developed between China and Latin America since the 1990s. Her publications include The Political Economy of China-Latin America Relations in the New Millennium (co-edited with Margaret Myers, Routledge, 2016) and "Playing both Side of the Pacific: Latin America's Free Trade Agreements with China," Pacific Affairs (2016). Prof. Wise was the 2015 recipient of the Fulbright-Masaryk University Distinguished Chair Grant, Czech Republic.