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Cheat Sheet: NAFTA’s Mixed Track Record Since 1994

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Cheat Sheet: NAFTA's Mixed Track Record Since 1994

NAFTA’s Mixed Track Record

Cheat sheet sums up the results of North American trade since 1994

The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

On January 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) officially came into effect, virtually eliminating all tariffs and trade restrictions between the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Bill Clinton, who lobbied extensively to get the deal done, said it would encourage other nations to work towards a broader world-trade pact. “NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs,” said Clinton, as he signed the document, “If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t support this agreement.”

Ross Perot had a contrary perspective. Lobbying heavily against the agreement, he noted that if it was ratified, Americans would hear a giant “sucking sound” as jobs went south of the border to Mexico.

It’s a Complicated World

Fast forward 20 years, and NAFTA is a hot-button issue again. Donald Trump has said he is working on “renegotiating” the agreement, and many Americans are sympathetic to this course of action.

However, coming to a decisive viewpoint on NAFTA’s success or failure can be difficult to achieve. Over two decades, the economic and political landscape has changed. China has risen and created a surplus of cheap labor, technology has changed massively, and central banks have kept the spigots on with QE and ultra-low interest rates. Deciphering what results have been the direct cause of NAFTA – and what is simply the result of a fast-changing world – is not quite straightforward.

In today’s chart, we break down a variety of metrics on the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to give a “before” and “after” story. The result is a mixed bag, but it will at least paint a picture of how the nations have fared comparatively since the agreement came into effect in 1994.

NAFTA: A Mixed Track Record

On the plus side, NAFTA created the world’s largest free trade area of 450 million people, where trade between the three members quadrupled from $297 billion to $1.14 trillion during the period of 1993-2015.

Further, the agreement likely had the effect of lowering prices for consumers, especially for food, automobiles, clothing, and electronics. It also reduced U.S. reliance on oil from OPEC. In 1994, the United States got 59% of its oil imports from OPEC, but that number is reduced to 44% today as trade with Canada has ramped up. Canada is now the #1 source of foreign oil in the United States.

NAFTA has also unequivocally led to the movement of auto jobs. While the amount of autos manufactured in North America has increased from 12.5 million (1990) to 18.1 million (2016), the share of that production has shifted.

North American Auto Production by Share

YearCanadaMexicoUSATotal Car/Trucks Produced in North America
199016%6%78%12.5 million
200717%13%70%15.4 million
201613%20%67%18.1 million

Mexico now produces 20% of all vehicles in North America – and U.S./Canadian shares have shifted down accordingly over the years. The ultimate result is the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs in both Michigan and Ontario, Canada.

As a final note, we also looked at comparing macroeconomic indicators from 1980-1993 (“Pre-NAFTA”) with those from 1994-2016 (“Post-NAFTA”).

For the U.S. in particular, here’s what has changed:

MetricPre-NAFTA (1980-1993)Post-NAFTA (1994-2016)Change
Avg. Real GDP Growth2.8%2.5%-0.3%
Avg. Unemployment Rate7.1%5.9%-1.2%
Annual Growth in Exports5.7%4.9%-0.9%
Annual Growth in GDP per Capita (PPP)5.9%3.3%-2.6%
Average Gini Coefficient (Inequality)34.237.43.2

This is not intended to be a comprehensive analysis, but it gives a snapshot of what has changed since NAFTA was ratified.

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Charted: What are Retail Investors Interested in Buying in 2023?

What key themes and strategies are retail investors looking at for the rest of 2023? Preview: AI is a popular choice.

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A cropped bar chart showing the various options retail investors picked as part of their strategy for the second half of 2023.

Charted: Retail Investors’ Top Picks for 2023

U.S. retail investors, enticed by a brief pause in the interest rate cycle, came roaring back in the early summer. But what are their investment priorities for the second half of 2023?

We visualized the data from Public’s 2023 Retail Investor Report, which surveyed 1,005 retail investors on their platform, asking “which investment strategy or themes are you interested in as part of your overall investment strategy?”

Survey respondents ticked all the options that applied to them, thus their response percentages do not sum to 100%.

Where Are Retail Investors Putting Their Money?

By far the most popular strategy for retail investors is dividend investing with 50% of the respondents selecting it as something they’re interested in.

Dividends can help supplement incomes and come with tax benefits (especially for lower income investors or if the dividend is paid out into a tax-deferred account), and can be a popular choice during more inflationary times.

Investment StrategyPercent of Respondents
Dividend Investing50%
Artificial Intelligence36%
Total Stock Market Index36%
Renewable Energy33%
Big Tech31%
Treasuries (T-Bills)31%
Electric Vehicles 27%
Large Cap26%
Small Cap24%
Emerging Markets23%
Real Estate23%
Gold & Precious Metals23%
Mid Cap19%
Inflation Protection13%
Commodities12%

Meanwhile, the hype around AI hasn’t faded, with 36% of the respondents saying they’d be interested in investing in the theme—including juggernaut chipmaker Nvidia. This is tied for second place with Total Stock Market Index investing.

Treasury Bills (30%) represent the safety anchoring of the portfolio but the ongoing climate crisis is also on investors’ minds with Renewable Energy (33%) and EVs (27%) scoring fairly high on the interest list.

Commodities and Inflation-Protection stocks on the other hand have fallen out of favor.

Come on Barbie, Let’s Go Party…

Another interesting takeaway pulled from the survey is how conversations about prevailing companies—or the buzz around them—are influencing trades. The platform found that public investors in Mattel increased 6.6 times after the success of the ‘Barbie’ movie.

Bud Light also saw a 1.5x increase in retail investors, despite receiving negative attention from their fans after the company did a beer promotion campaign with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

Given the origin story of a large chunk of American retail investors revolves around GameStop and AMC, these insights aren’t new, but they do reveal a persisting trend.

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