Center for North American Studies
Purpose
To promote stronger relationships between Canada, Mexico, and the United States in the trade of food and fiber products by integrating the efforts among the four partner institutions. These efforts are aimed at:
- Applied research on international marketing and cross-border issues
- Conferences and workshops on trade operations, regulations, and market opportunities
- Cooperative institutional partnerships with organizations in Mexico and Canada
- Analysis of trade policies and their impacts on U.S. industry sectors
Relevance
Canada and Mexico are our first and second largest markets, accounting for 37 percent of U.S. export growth to the world in 2007. For agriculture, Canada and Mexico alone account for 55 percent of the increase in U.S. agriculture exports to the world since NAFTA. From 1993 to 2007, trade among the NAFTA nations has increased from $297 billion to $908 billion. The Center plays a critical role for the promotion and impact analysis of agricultural trade relationships among Canada, Mexico, and the United States through education and training, research, policy analysis, and cooperative study.
Accomplishments/Impacts
- Priority Trade Analysis. The center works to address priority trade issues – providing objective analysis and open discussion of crucial trade issues, facilitating open trade growth, maintaining U.S. agricultural competitiveness, and fostering greater cooperation in resolving agricultural trade problems.
- Market Opportunities. Programs have been successful focusing on trade liberalization and market opportunities, implementation of international marketing operations, understanding Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point standards and trade regulations, and assessing producer views of trade negotiations.
- Institutional Partnerships. Cooperative institutional partnerships have been developed with internationally recognized agricultural programs in Mexico and Canada to study the interactions of agricultural and food systems among North American Free Trade Agreement countries. Exchanges of faculty, researchers and students have contributed to a better understanding of cross-country issues relevant for the three countries.
- Policy Modeling. Research collaboration with Mexican institutions has achieved the development of expanded policy modeling tools incorporating specific and relevant Mexican economic equations. These more accurate tools will be very useful to both countries for the forecasting and simulation of policy scenarios on the respective agricultural sectors.
Lead Agency: Texas A&M University System
Partners: Texas Tech University, Louisiana State University, New Mexico State University
Federal Funding Request for FY 2010: $1.5 million (TTU receives 18 percent of total)