International trade must be analysed within the historical context within which it occurs. Behind the statistics on trade flows lie power structures, class interests and international hierarchies. These change over time and how countries respond to them has critical implications for their citizen's well-being. In this book, the history of trade in Australia, Canada and Mexico is analysed. Trade agreements are analysed in detail to explore the new forms that dependence and subordination have taken. Arguing that the free trade agreements are significantly biased in favour of the United States, the contributors analyse how each of the three countries are being subject to specific forms of re-peripheralisation and examine possible alternatives for a progressive future based on an integration in the global economy which enhances, rather than limits, democracy and social justice. By providing an historical and critical account of trade policy in the three countries, the book provides a welcome antidote to the ahistorical accounts of free trade supporters.

Highly critical and controversial, this comparative volume, uses a well-established centre-periphery model (from World-Systems Theory and Dependency Theory) to study free-trade agreements, focusing on three countries (Australia, Canada and Mexico) with comparable locations within global capitalism as the basis for comparison.

For most of the twentieth century, Australia, Canada and Mexico were engaged in national projects of development. By the end of the twentieth century, all three had departed significantly from these projects under the weight of neoliberal globalism, symbolized by the signing of free trade agreements with the United States. This shift of economic paradigm towards neoliberalism and the political shift in the international political economy to one of unparalleled U.S. hegemony raises the spectre of 're-peripheralisation' for all three countries.

Arguing that 're-peripheralisation' is already underway in all three countries and can only be reversed by adopting alternative projects appropriate to the twenty-first century, this book is a valuable resource for all students of international trade and politics.