US President Donald Trump said the US is pursuing a new trade accord with Mexico to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and called on Canada to join the deal soon or risk being left out.
Trump announced the agreement with Mexico in a hastily arranged Oval Office event on Monday with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto joining by conference call.
Pena Nieto said he was “quite hopeful” Canada would soon be incorporated in the revised agreement, while Trump said that remained to be see, but that he wanted those negotiations to begin quickly.
Photo: Reuters
Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland would leave a trip in Europe early to travel to Washington for NAFTA talks scheduled for yesterday, spokesman Adam Austen said on Monday.
Canada and the US are still at odds over some key issues.
The US and Mexico agreed to increase regional automotive content to 75 percent from the current 62.5 percent in NAFTA, with 40 percent to 45 percent of production by workers earning at least US$16 an hour, the US Trade Representative’s (USTR) office said in an e-mailed statement.
They agreed to review the deal after six years, softening a demand by the US for a clause to kill the pact after five years unless it is renewed by all parties.
Duty-free access for agricultural products will remain in place, USTR said.
As he announced the move, Trump said he would drop the name NAFTA from the accord because of its unpopularity.
“We’re going to call it the United States/Mexico Trade Agreement,” he said.
NAFTA “has a bad connotation because the United States was hurt very badly by NAFTA for many years.”
While the US president hailed it as “a big day for trade,” groups representing US workers and companies withheld full endorsements.
The Business Roundtable, which represents chief executives at major US companies, said it was encouraged by the progress, but said NAFTA “must remain trilateral” and is concerned the announcement might not signal an improvement.
A coalition of five unions, including the AFL-CIO and United Steelworkers, said more work is needed to fix NAFTA.
“We are not done yet,” the unions said in a statement.
An accord between the US and Mexico is the biggest development in talks that began a year ago, punctuated by Trump’s repeated threats to quit altogether. Significant breakthroughs came during the past several days of bilateral talks on automobiles and energy.
The three countries trade more than US$1 trillion annually.
Questions remain about how the Trump administration will steer a deal through the US Congress, and whether Canada will be part of the final pact.
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