NAFTA and Transnational Contention: A Decade of Alliance and Conflict over Neoliberalism

Abstract

As the previous chapters in this book make clear, North American contention over trade and globalization is now part of the world historical stage. Tensions between regionalization and globalization arose from the early struggles against the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) and onward to present-day concerns about the evolution of the so-called ‘Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America’ (SPP). In this chapter, we focus on the profusion of conflict at a continental level, though not without acknowledging an implicit understanding that much of what propels regionalization is a response to globalization. Forces of contraction and expansion affect the ambitions of social movements as well as states and corporations. In this chapter, we suggest that contention over international trade in North America has indeed taken a transnational form and has done so within a dynamic ‘alliance and conflict system’ (ACS).