Curtis: Is North America dead?

By: /
30 January, 2012
By: John Curtis
Adjunct Professor at Queen's University and Chair of Statistics Canada's Advisory Committee on International Trade Statistics

North America is alive and well. Even without including Mexico, part of North America only through a major trade agreement and 12 million-person human migration to the USA, Canada and the United States together and separately represent the world’s most integrated manufacturing sector, the world’s leader in research and development in new sectors such as life sciences and consumer electronics, the world’s pre-eminent military power, a world-scale natural resource base, the home of most of the world’s best universities, the world’s largest and most innovative money and capital markets, and a centre of world culture, particularly of popular culture. While in relative decline over the past thirty years with the growth in other parts of the world and recognizing serious challenges in areas ranging from early education, physical infrastructure, and fiscal management, North America overall stands tall in these first years of the 21st century.

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