The U.S. is rapidly “running out of time” to wrap up its trade deal with Mexico, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Tuesday. Any further delay, he warned, would mean that the White House would have to renegotiate the deal with the incoming Mexican presidential administration of leftist Andres Manuel Lopes Obrador — and the Trump administration has no idea how that would turn out.
The Trump administration has, under the rules for submitting trade deals to Congress, until the end of the month to wrap up the deal while the current Mexican President, Enrique Pena Nieto, who negotiated the deal, is still in office. However, the U.S. has not been able to get Canada to assent to the deal to prevent it from disrupting the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement. U.S. and Canadian officials have been meeting for a month, but Lighthizer said they appeared to be no closer to a deal.
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“I think Canada would like to be in the agreement. I think the U.S. would like them to be in the agreement, but there is still a fair amount of distance between us. There are very large issues,” Lighthizer said at a forum, hosted by the nonprofit group Concordia. “We’ll see whether it happens. We are sort of running out of time.”
The deal could be unraveled if they cannot get it done before Pena Nieto leaves office Nov. 30, Lighthizer said. “If we push it beyond that day then we have a negotiation with Lopez Obrador and we don’t know where that would go at all,” he said.
Lighthizer cited Canada’s efforts to protect its dairy and preserve the existing dispute resolution system in NAFTA as the key issues holding up a deal.
The Trump administration has said Canada’s assent is not necessary and formally submitted the deal to Congress, but nevertheless pursued an agreement with Canada to soothe lawmakers’ concerns over the deal’s impact on NAFTA.
