What is Free Trade?

Free trade is a policy program that sets out to reduce barriers to imports and exports between countries. Under a free trade policy, goods and services can be bought and sold across international borders with little or no government tariffs, quotas, subsidies, or prohibitions to inhibit their exchange.

Beginning in the 1980s, the Canadian government set out to adopt a series of agreements and institute a transnational order that deregulated economic transactions across borders, including:

– The Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (1988)
– The North American Free Trade Agreement (1994)
– The World Trade Organization (1995)
– The Multilateral Agreement on Investment (defeated in 1998)
– The Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (defeated in 2005)
– The Canadian-European Union Comprehensive Economic And Trade Agreement (CETA) (2016)
– The Trans-Pacific Partnership (2018)
– The Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) (2020)