Canadian and Mexican officials said this week that negotiations with the United States on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) should be, as a matter of commons sense, trilateral, rather than bilateral as President Trump has previously said.
“NAFTA is a trilateral agreement, and that has worked because it is a trilateral North American trading relationship,” said Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s minister for foreign affairs. “NAFTA can be modernized only with the agreement of three parties and I am confident that that will be how we go,” Freeland said. Freeland did acknowledge that some issues within the region are bilateral by nature, such as U.S. disputes with Canada over lumber and with Mexico over sugar.
This view was also echoed by Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray. “In the beginning, NAFTA was not a trilateral deal, but after some thought, common sense made it a trilateral deal. And that was 25 years ago when the integration of value chains was not present,” Videgaray said.
President Trump has kept open the possibility of abandoning NAFTA if the United States does not secure a satisfactory deal. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has said that the reworking of NAFTA could be as the existing trilateral pact or a series of bilateral agreements.
Newly confirmed U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has said that the United States hopes to maintain the existing structure of the agreement, although there are no guarantees and that parts of the negotiation will be conducted bilaterally.
Congress was notified earlier this month of the Trump administration’s intention to begin NAFTA talks. However, the administration has not yet sent Congress details of the concrete objectives necessary before talks can begin. Formal negotiations are expected to begin by mid or late August.
