Spring 2024
Professor(s):
Elizabeth Trujillo (FACULTY)
Credits: 3
Course Areas: International Law
Business and Commercial Law
Time: 10:30a-12:00p MW Location: 222
Course Outline: This course will introduce you to the North American Free Trade Agreement ("NAFTA") and its revised version under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), along with the emerging legal and commercial issues surrounding the treaty. Because the NAFTA was the first U.S. regional trade agreement, it has been used as model for other regional trade agreements. We will discuss the context which brought about the NAFTA, study various USMCA provisions to understand the ways in which the USMCA changed (or not) the original NAFTA. Specifically, we will examine its dispute settlement processes (specifically current US disputes against Mexico on energy, environment, and labor), tariffs and the rules of origin and how they impact North American supply chain production, and the ways that the USMCA addresses environmental and labor controversies in the three countries. We will also examine the relationship between regional trade agreements like the USMCA to multilateral agreements and institutions such as GATT and the WTO as well as the impact of the USMCA on the economic, political, and social structures of the three participating countries. General issues of international law and trade will be discussed in the context of regional trade agreements and the ramifications of having (or not) a free trade agreement for the production supply-chains of the North American region.
This course will have a final paper as the grade assessment which will meet the upper-level (WRS) writing requirement.
No pre-requisites are required for this course.
Course Syllabus: Syllabus
First week reading
Course Notes: (Face-to-Face) The UH registration system instruction mode for this course is listed in parenthesis. For this instruction mode, instructors and students are expected to normally be physically present in the classroom. If the course has a final examination, it will be in a classroom requiring your physical presence. Other assessment, such as a mid-term exam, may also be in a classroom. Whether this instructor will offer “remote presence” (starting a zoom meeting from the podium computer to enable student remote access on an occasional basis) for part or all of the semester is not known, but students should not rely on an expectation that remote presence will be available.
Quota=12.
Prerequisites:
First Day Assignments:
Final Exam Schedule:
This course will have:
Exam:
Paper:
Satisfies Senior Upper Level Writing Requirement: Yes
Experiential Course Type: No
Bar Course: No
DistanceEd ABA: No
Pass-Fail Student Election: Unavailable (Instructor Preference)
Course Materials
Book(s) Required
Course Materials: David Gantz's An Introduction to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (Elgar Publishing). . You will also be required to read provisions from the USMCA. The full text can be found here: https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/united-states-mexico-canada-agreement/agreement-between
Recommended readings:
NAFTA: Free Trade and Foreign Investment in the Americas in a Nutshell, 5th Edition, Kindle Edition by Ralph Folsom (Author) ISBN-13: 978-0314290267; ISBN-10: 0314290265 (the NAFTA Nutshell).
The USMCA, NAFTA Re-Negotiated and Its Business Implications in a Nutshell - 6th edition
