The Americas face a historic opportunity. Will the region grasp it?

Economic integration in North America tends to inspire extreme views. The most famous recent critic, Donald Trump, referred to the continent’s original free-trade pact as “the worst trade deal maybe ever”. By contrast, evangelists for cross-border links say they are making North America the world’s most dynamic region.

Roughly equidistant between these two poles is North America’s solid, though unspectacular, commercial reality. The continent’s trade in goods and services has quadrupled in nominal value since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into force in 1994, to more than $7trn, or roughly 30% of GDP. But that is slower than the sixfold growth in trade experienced by the rest of the world over that time. Intraregional trade connections have become denser in Europe and Asia. Canada and Mexico do oodles of business with the United States but little with each other.