The top negotiators for Canada and Mexico on Tuesday publicly slammed U.S. proposals to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer standing next to them, saying the proposals went too far and would undermine the trade pact.
Lighthizer responded by saying the countries had reneged on changes that they had agreed to in prior negotiations.
“Frankly, I am surprised and disappointed by the resistance to change from our negotiating partners on both fronts. We have made some headway on the first objective, but even here we have sometimes seen a refusal to accept what is clearly the best text available in spite of the countries having agreed to it in the past,” Lighthizer said at a press conference Tuesday in Arlington, Va., marking the end of the fourth round of talks to negotiate the 1993 trade deal.
He added that Canada and Mexico had rejected proposals they had previously agreed to as part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed trade deal President Trump rejected this year. “In certain cases, partners who agree to TPP have actually rejected its text here. I would have thought by now we could have cleared chapters dealing with digital trade, telecommunications, anticorruption and several sectoral annexes, for example.”
At the same event, Canada Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland warned that proposals under discussion “would turn back the clock on 23 years of progress” and said one of the parties was pursuing “an approach that seeks to undermine NAFTA, not improve it.”
Mexican Economic Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo warned his country could not go along with several proposals. “In order for the efforts of Mexico, the United States and Canada to be fruitful, we must understand that we all have limits,” he said, calling the approach under discussion “lose-lose-lose.”
Lighthizer said the next round of talks would begin in Mexico City Nov. 17.
The Trump administration is pushing to add a sunset clause to NAFTA as well as an increase in the percentage of an automobile’s inputs, such as parts and labor, that come from either the U.S. or Canada to have a car be deemed to be “made in America.” Today, 62.5 percent of a car has to come from the U.S. or Canada to meet the standard, but the Trump administration wants to increase that to 85 percent and more generally wants to require more production in the U.S. to help drive production and jobs back to America.
Both Canada and Mexico are home to many companies that form part of the U.S. auto industry supply chain. Changing the rules this way would severely disrupt their business.
