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As prime minister, Brian Mulroney established a free-trade deal with the U.S. in 1989 and later helped create NAFTA. He testified Tuesday in hearings before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., on NAFTA. These are his prepared remarks:

This story begins at the Shamrock Summit in Quebec City in March of 1985 when President Reagan and I agreed to consider the negotiation of a comprehensive free trade agreement between our two countries.

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Growing protectionism in Congress then was leading to growing estrangement in Canada vis-à-vis the U.S. The situation was not an encouraging one.

After a highly successful subsequent state visit to Canada, President Reagan reported to the American people in his weekend radio address: “We also discussed our current efforts to tear down barriers to commerce and establish free trade between our peoples and countries. The enthusiastic reception I received from the Canadian Parliament suggests that a free trade agreement between Canada and the United States is an idea whose time has come. I pledged to Prime Minister Mulroney and the people in Canada that we’re going all out to make this visionary proposal of the prime minister a reality. We’ll do it for the prosperity and jobs it will create in both our countries; but, just as important, it will be an example to all the world that free and fair trade, and not protectionism, is the way to progress and economic advancement.”