What Is It? NAFTA is a free trade agreement (FTA) among the United States, Canada, and Mexico that entered into force on January 1, 1994 (P.L. 103-182). All three partners are currently in negotiations for a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed comprehensive and high standard FTA among 12 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, which could alter certain NAFTA provisions. NAFTA continues to be of interest to Congress because of the strong U.S. trade and investment ties with Canada and Mexico, and because of its significance for U.S. trade policy. At the time it was negotiated, NAFTA was unusual in global terms because it was the first time that a U.S. FTA linked two advanced economies with a developing country. For this reason, the agreement sparked debate among policy makers, industries, agriculture producers, labor unions, nongovernment organizations, and academics about its potential benefits and costs. NAFTA-implementing legislation included revisions to the U.S. trade adjustment assistance program to address production shifts and assist dislocated workers. NAFTA Facts Milestones.
When developing nations suffer from crises and disasters, it becomes urgent and critical to raise relief funds rapidly with the engagement of a greater number of donors. In this regard, digital technology has repeatedly aided during crises. Two such technologies include online promotions influencing citizens for donations, and mobile payments providing a mechanism for quick transfer of funds. In this paper, we study how online promotions that are notified through mobile payment apps, can be a pair of technology enabling successful and rapid fund transfer, thereby offering protective security during a crisis, along with transparency in transactions (Sen 2001). We examine the role of the two technologies in combination through field interviews amidst the Covid-19 crisis in India and draw implications for relief fund collection mechanisms. Initial results show that the role of online promotions and mobile payments have questionable implications in terms of transparency. The study contributes to both mobile payments and online promotions in crisis literature.
This paper intends to offer a critical understanding of citizen engagement in the process of city making using two case studies within the Indian context, namely, Magarpatta City in Maharashtra and Auroville in Tamil Nadu. As an initial foray into the issue, it engages with contemporary discourses on the scope and nature of public participation in urban development within the framework of a neoliberal economy. This is followed by a qualitative analysis based on unstructured interviews, which capture the live experiences of the local landowners and residents in each location. The findings indicate that citizen engagement is instrumental in producing socially equitable urbanization. If harnessed well, it offers the possibility for an effective departure from the traditional state-market dynamics, which presently underlie forms of neoliberal urbanism in developing countries. This paper, therefore, makes the case for mainstreaming citizen participation for urban development as an attempt to create a sustainable built environment that caters to the needs of citizens.
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