Why was NAFTA  not extended, even after fulfilling several stated objectives? Investigating a number of roadblocks (balancing regional and multilateral environmental obligations, migration and refugee spillovers, synchronizing federal, state, and local investment laws, societal transnationalism over education, for instance, sociological/anthropological concerns over transformations at the local level, gender relations, and the impacts of the 2008 recession and H1N1 pandemic), several scholars elevate the growing but neglected importance of parallel intra-state and transnational dynamics demanding attention. Utilizing James Rosenau’s state-multi-centric models, their conclusions/implications shed light not just why North American integration is not working, but on broader regional experiments.