Remarks by President Barack Obama. The North American Leaders Summit. Guadalajara, Mexico.
August 10, 2009
"Because so much of our common prosperity and millions of jobs depend on trade that flows across our borders -- billions of dollars worth of trade every day -- we reaffirmed the need to reject protectionism. We recommitted ourselves to the infrastructure investments, the common-sense regulations and intellectual property protections upon which trade thrives. We are among each other's largest trading partners. As we work together towards lasting prosperity, we need to expand that trade, not restrict it." Text

Joint Statement by North American Leaders. Guadalajara, Mexico.
August 10, 2009
"Our integrated economies are an engine of growth. We are investing in border infrastructure, including advanced technology, to create truly modern borders to facilitate trade and the smooth operation of supply chains, while protecting our security. Building on these investments, we will work together to strengthen the resilience of our critical infrastructure, which transcends borders and sustains the well-being of our communities and economies. We will cooperate in the protection of intellectual property rights to facilitate the development of innovative economies. We commend the progress achieved on reducing unnecessary regulatory differences and have instructed our respective Ministers to continue this work by building on the previous efforts, developing focused priorities and a specific timeline." Text

Joint Press Conference with President Barack Obama and President Felipe Calderón. Los Pinos. Mexico City, Mexico.
April 16, 2009
President Obama: "Our deep economic ties mean that whenever -- whatever steps that we're going to take moving forward have to be taken together ..." Text

Liveblog: The President in Canada.
February 19, 2009
"The trade challenges we face in North America are common trade challenges, they're not problems between our countries." Text

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State. Foreign Policy Address at the Council on Foreign Relations. Washington, DC
July 15, 2009
"We want to seek global economic recovery and growth by strengthening our own economy, advancing a robust development agenda, expanding trade that is free and fair, and boosting investment that creates decent jobs." Text

Remarks by Assistant Secretary of State Thomas A. Shannon, Jr. Americas Society. Council of the Americas. New York, NY
April 07, 2008
"... the Security and Prosperity Partnership. This is a North American effort to take NAFTA, address the remaining friction points in the commercial and trade relationship to ensure that as our economies evolve that our trading relationships evolve and our regulatory regimes evolve so that we can actually facilitate the movement of goods and services across our borders, but also understands North America as a shared economic space and that as a shared economic space we need to protect it, and that we need to understand that we don’t protect this economic space only at our frontiers, that it has to be protected more broadly throughout North America. And as we have worked through the Security and Prosperity Partnership to improve our commercial and trading relationship, we have also worked to improve our security cooperation. To a certain extent, we’re armoring NAFTA. We’re trying to show that this $15 trillion economy can be protected against a threat of terrorism and against a threat of natural disasters and environmental and ecological disasters." Text