A Brief History
On January 16, 2020, the US Senate confirmed a new trade agreement between the US, Canada, and Mexico, aptly called the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement. This new trade treaty was the promised replacement of the previous agreement, called NAFTA, or North American Free Trade Agreement, an agreement reviled by President Trump who had promised to renegotiate the agreement and replace it with a pact more beneficial to the US.
Digging Deeper
Although then President Trump was the impetus behind the USMCA, as a presidential candidate and as president elect in 2024, Trump has turned against his own agreement and has promised severe tariffs against Mexican and Canadian imports into the US, with a number of online personalities applauding this policy shift.
While the lack of fealty to treaties with Native Americans has often been pointed out as a lack of good faith by the US Government, a more recent case of the US not living up to an important treaty is that of the so called Budapest Memorandum, an agreement between the US, Ukraine, and Russia to guarantee the integrity of Ukraine’s borders and its sovereignty if Ukraine would give up the tremendous stockpile of nuclear weapons left in the country when the USSR dissolved. In 2014, when Russia occupied and eventually annexed the Ukrainian Crimea, the US failed to live up to its promise to protect Ukraine.
Now, although the US has been providing logistical assistance to Ukraine in its defense against the Russian invasion of 2022, the US is falling far short of any sort of “guarantee” of Ukraine’s security.
These incidents make some wonder if the word of the US is any good. Do you think such criticism is warranted?
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Should the US intervene in Ukraine with military force?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Fixico, Donald. Indian Treaties in the United States: An Encyclopedia and Documents Collection. Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.
Folsom, Ralph and W. Folsom. The USMCA and Its Business Impacts in a Nutshell. West Academic Publishing, 2024.
The featured image in this article, a map of North America, is a work of a Central Intelligence Agency employee, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. As a Work of the United States Government, this image or media is in the public domain in the United States.
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