Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said Friday “good progress” was being made in the most recent talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, following a meeting in Washington with her counterparts in Mexico and the U.S. White House officials meanwhile have been telling allies that the deal could be completed within weeks.
“We are certainly in a more intense period of the negotiations and we are making good progress,” Freeland told reporters. She added that didn’t mean that the talks would be concluded soon. “It will take as long as it takes.”
Freeland met this week with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Mexican Economic Minister Ildefonso Guajardo. The latest round is heavily focusing on automobile “rules of origin” that determine how components of a car must be made in the U.S. for it to qualify as “made in America.” The Trump administration had demanded much higher standards, stalling progress, but has since made a “creative proposal” that has put new energy in the talks, Freeland said.
The Trump administration is preparing for a possible vote on a new NAFTA deal this summer, sources close to the administration tell the Washington Examiner. Politico reported Friday that the administration had been briefing congressional staff on elements of the deal and was mulling strategies for getting a deal through Congress. One possibility was withdrawing from the existing NAFTA treaty before submitting the new one to Congress, obliging lawmakers who prefer the status quo to approve the new deal if they want to keep NAFTA at all.
