how these questions are answered in a specific free trade agreement tends to be based on political influences within and power relations among countries this shapes the degree of how free the trade is and its scope the goal is to create a trade policy upon which all participating countries can feasibly agree 
benefits of free trade areasthe benefits of free trade areas include providing consumers with increased access to less expensive and or higher quality foreign goods and the lowering of prices as governments reduce or eliminate tariffs producers can acquire a greatly expanded market of potential customers or suppliers free trade areas can also encourage economic development in countries as a whole benefiting some of the population through increased living standards free trade is favored by some advocates of free market economics because they say it improves efficiency and innovation by encouraging competition they also suggest that it promotes fairness in the markets and economy as it eliminates monopolies that can hurt consumers this lowers the barriers to entry for new competitors 2the history of international trade agreements is a long one but the current general acceptance of free trade agreements dates to the bretton woods conference in the aftermath of world war ii 3criticism of free trade areascritics argue that free trade areas can hurt the economies of participating countries and to some extent the global economy for instance certain workers may lose jobs and face related hardships as production moves to areas where comparative advantage or home market effects make those industries less costly to run and more efficient overall some investments in fixed physical and human capital will end up losing value or as entirely sunk costs producers may struggle with increased competition this can lead to a deterioration of workplace environments especially if companies look for cheap labor by outsourcing jobs in developing nations other drawbacks include making an economy too dependent on just a few products preventing the growth of infant industries that need economic protection endangering security if a country becomes too dependent on imports of vital resources and forcing countries to lower environmental standards to compete 4president donald trump was highly critical and moved the country away from free trade agreements instituting tariffs as a form of economic warfare president biden and his administration have not rescinded trump s tariffs despite calls to do so 5example of free trade areasthe united states participates in 14 free trade areas with 20 countries 6 one of the best known and largest free trade areas was created by the signing of the north american free trade agreement nafta on jan 1 1994 this agreement signed by canada the united states and mexico encouraged trade among these north american countries 7these three countries replaced nafta with the united states mexico canada agreement usmca in 2018 it went into effect on july 1 2020 8 the u s also participates in the central american free trade area dominican republic cafta dr which includes the dominican republic costa rica el salvador nicaragua honduras and guatemala 9 individual agreements are in place between the u s and australia bahrain chile colombia panama peru singapore israel jordan korea oman and morocco 6the u s began negotiations in march 2010 for the trans pacific partnership tpp to create a high standard broad based regional pact for a regional asia pacific trade agreement however trump pulled the u s out of the agreement on jan 30 2017 one of his first official acts the agreement proceeded without the u s as a participant 10the transatlantic trade and investment partnership t tip was intended as a companion to tpp by creating an agreement with the european union eu 11 the agreement fell through in 2016 after greenpeace leaked 248 classified pages from the negotiations 1213 although no free trade agreement exists between the eu and the u s a reduction of tariffs in august 2020 was announced to increase market access for hundreds of millions of dollars in u s and eu exports 14