page_title: Carlos Salinas de Gortari
section_title: North American Free Trade Agreement
hierarchical_section_title: Carlos Salinas de Gortari / Presidency 1988–1994 / North American Free Trade Agreement
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Signature de l'Accord de libre-échange nord-américain en octobre 1992. De gauche à droite, debouts&#160;: Carlos Salinas de Gortari (président mexicain), George H. W. Bush (président américain) et Brian Mulroney (premier ministre canadien). De gauche à droite, assis&#160;: Jaime Serra Puche (Secrétaire du Commerce international et du développement industriel du Mexique), Carla Hills (Représentant au Commerce des États-Unis) et Michael Wilson (ministre du Commerce international du Canada). English: NAFTA Initialing Ceremony, October 1992 From left to right (standing) Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, US President George H. W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. (Seated) Mexican Secretary of Commerce and Industrial Development Jaime Serra Puche, United States Trade Representative Carla Hills, Canadian Minister of International Trade Michael Wilson.
context_page_description: Carlos Salinas de Gortari is a Mexican economist and politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party who served as President of Mexico from 1988 to 1994. He is widely regarded as the most influential and controversial politician in Mexico since the 1990s. Earlier in his career he worked in the Budget Secretariat, eventually becoming Secretary. He was the PRI presidential candidate in 1988, and was declared elected on 6 July 1988 after accusations of electoral fraud.
  An economist, Salinas de Gortari was the first Mexican president since 1946 who was not a law graduate. His presidency was characterized by the entrenchment of the neoliberal, free trade economic policies initiated by his predecessor Miguel de la Madrid in observance of the Washington Consensus, mass privatizations of state-run companies, Mexico's entry into NAFTA, negotiations with the right-wing opposition party PAN to recognize their victories in gubernatorial elections in exchange for supporting Salinas' policies, normalization of relations with the Catholic clergy, and the adoption of a new currency, among other things.
context_section_description: The centerpiece of Salinas's presidency was his successful negotiation with the U.S. and Canada to create the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which came into effect on 1 January 1994. The agreement was a reversal of Mexico's longstanding policies of economic nationalism and anti-Americanism and was intended to create a single market. Mexican proponents of NAFTA saw it in a way to secure markets for its exports and attract foreign investment, and create jobs, help the government to be able to service its foreign debt, and overall, promote economic recovery. In Mexico, the reversal was controversial, opposed by organized labor, many academics, and nongovernmental organizations.
caption: Carlos Salinas (left), George H. W. Bush, and Brian Mulroney during the NAFTA Initialing Ceremony in Austin, Texas.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2011:12:22 21:39:01", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7649", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "715", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "481"}