Mexico is one of the world's freer intermediate economies. Tariffs have been eliminated and goods, services and capital move practically free. It has signed free trade agreements with almost every developed nation and with a number of developing States. Keeping in line with NAFTA has become the roadmap that guides their trade strategy. As such, it has integrated many trade differences and incorporated agreements on intellectual property, service exchanges, and investment commitments that usually were only included in common markets or economic unions. Besides it forced the agricultural sector into accepting a lowering of tariffs at the time when integration policies favored industrial productivity. As such it is important to study the effects of NAFTA on Mexican agriculture such as lower productivity, the weight on the rural economies, and the increase in rural poverty.
