NAFTA Viewed from Below the Border

Virginia Postrel has written a New York Times article on what happened to Canadian business after NAFTA:

Before the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement in 1989, one in four Canadian industries — from dressmakers to breweries — were protected by tariffs. What happened when they faced untaxed competition from south of the border? My new NYT column [registration required] looks at a pathbreaking empirical study, using both industry and plant-level data. The article, by Dan Trefler of University of Toronto, is well-known in Canada, where, as econ papers tend to do, it has been kicking around for years in working paper form. But its lessons are remarkable. Even in an advance economy with sound macro policy, simply cutting tariffs can lead to huge productivity gains.