ITC Report on Economics of USMCA Out; Next Up, Politics

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) released its report on the likely impact on the U.S. economy and specific industry sectors from the U.S.-Canada-Mexico Agreement (USMCA). The main finding is unsurprising: “if fully implemented and enforced, USMCA would have a positive impact on U.S. real GDP and employment.” Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was already beneficial to Canada, Mexico and the United States, the changes were not expected to be on net negative.However, the topline figure which “estimates that USMCA would raise real U.S. GDP by $68.2 billion (0.35 percent) and U.S. employment by 176,000 jobs (0.12 percent)” is slightly higher than expected, but still small in terms of its overall impact on the U.S. economy.Both exports and imports will increase as a result of the deal, though many of the gains remain small or modest, such as in textiles and apparel, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, electronic products, energy products and services. The reason why smaller gains are expected here is because NAFTA already liberalized most trade in these sectors, so any additional reductions would be minor.There are two notable outcomes worth highlighting. First, the largest gains are expected to come from new rules on international data transfers and e-commerce, which were not part of the original NAFTA. Locking in existing commitments on the free cross-border flow of information is likely to deter future barriers to data transfers, such as data ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs