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The North American Free Trade Agreement joined the United States, Mexico, and Canada in one of the world’s largest free trade zones. Over ten years, tariffs on most products were to be progressively removed. In the five years proceeding, additional tariffs would be eliminated. During the Clinton administration, in 1994, the first of the proposed reductions took place. The opponents of the agreement felt that the union would cause lowered standards in health and environmental control, job loss, and that uniformity would hinder the United States. Proponents argued that the overall economic benefit for all countries would overshadow the possible ramifications. Environmentalist were opposed to NAFTA because they felt that Chapter Eleven Laws of the agreement would override laws that protected people’s health and environment. In part, the Chapter Eleven law states that a foreign company can sue a government over government measures that allegedly limit the value of their investment. Evidence for this argument is clear in the September 2000 case in which a Canadian company sued the United States for one billion dollars because the company could not sell its product due to the state’s water protection regulation.
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