b'2American Journal of Transportation ajot.comUSMCAA year afterIts been a year since the USMCA free trade agree-ment was consummated between the three North Americannations:theUnitedStates,Mexico and Canada. Whether the USMCA is a good deal, baddeal or something else altogether, is still being debated. But what is becoming increasingly clear one year later is the USMCA is better than no deal at all.By Matt Miller, AJOTWhen the United States,resumed, shipping costs sky-MexicoandCanadafinallyrocketed and it often became implemented a new free tradedifficulttoevenlocatean dealinJuly,2020,amam- empty container.mothsighofreliefechoedOntopoftheCOVID-from the Gulf of Mexico torelateduncertaintywaslay-the Arctic Circle. The stakeseredarapidlyescalating wereenormous.Oneofthetrade dispute between the US worlds largest trading blocsand China during the Trump hadhunginthebalanceregime.Thetit-for-tatslap-duringoften-tensenego- ping of tariffs saw hundreds tiationsandratificationthatofbillionsofdollarsworth stretchedfrom August2017(YEARcontinued on until March 2020.page 4)Hadtherenotbeenan agreement, there would have been widespread panic, said Eric Miller, president of the RideauPotomacStrategy Group, a trade-focused advi-sory and consultancy.Now, a year into the US-Mexico-CanadaAgreement, shrugs largely have replaced cheers.The USMCA is sort of likethefireworksthatyou light and then it goes poof, said Nicole Bivens Collinson, wholeadstheinternational tradeandgovernmentrela-tions practice of the law firm Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg.T heUSMCAinC onTexTThe USMCA replaced the NorthAmericanFreeTrade Agreement,orNAFTA,the three-decades old treaty that melded trade between the three North American economies.To be sure, several devel-opments have impacted North American trade since imple-mentationoftheagreement began.Somearemonumen-tal, others more modest. But very little is directly linked to the treaty. Theresbeenalotthat has happened in the past year, but I dont think that I could say, oh, thats because of the USMCA, said Bivens Col-linson,aformernegotiator withtheOfficeoftheU.S. Trade Representative.To understand these changes and whatif anyrela-tionship theyve had with the agreement itself, its useful to think back at the state of play during talks and approval. First,ofcourse,isthe globalpandemicandthe trade upheaval that COVID-19 wrought. During the first halfof2020,international tradeplummetedandglobal supply chains were stretched and weakened. The US wres-tledwithacuteshortagesin high-profile goods like medi-calequipment,whileChina temporarily shut down ports, disruptingallsortsoftrade. Then,whentradefinally'