NAFTA signed into law

On December 8, 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act in Washington, clearing the way for NAFTA to take effect on January 1, 1994. Clinton had won House passage on November 17, 1993 and Senate passage on November 20, 1993 after lobbying Democrats and Republicans to support the trade deal negotiated by George H. W. Bush, Brian Mulroney, and Carlos Salinas de Gortari. The law bound the United States, Mexico, and Canada into a tariff-reduction framework that lowered barriers to trade and investment across North America.

NAFTA intensified the central modern debate over whether trade liberalization would strengthen American competitiveness or accelerate factory losses and wage pressure. Clinton argued that export growth and continental production chains would modernize the American economy, while Ross Perot, labor unions, and many Democrats warned that manufacturers would move jobs to Mexico where labor costs were lower. The administration answered some of those criticisms with parallel labor and environmental side agreements, but the political conflict over globalization did not disappear after the signing ceremony.

NAFTA entered into force on January 1, 1994 and immediately replaced the 1988 Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement with a broader continental framework. The political backlash against NAFTA later contributed to the renegotiation that produced the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which took effect in 2020 and formally replaced NAFTA.