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US-Canada NAFTA talks to resume Friday as deadline looms
WASHINGTON, Aug 31, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – With Friday’s deadline fast
approaching, talks continued late into the night on Thursday without reaching
a deal between Canada and the US on an overhaul of the North American Free
Trade Agreement.
Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland held four meetings Thursday
with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to try to bridge differences
to preserve the three-nation trade pact with the US and Mexico.
But, after the last meeting ended, Freeland told reporters: “No we don’t
have a deal.”
However, she said, “discussions continue tomorrow.”
The White House plans to notify Congress on Friday of its intention to
enter into a new free trade agreement, to provide the required 90 days’
notice that would allow NAFTA 2.0 to be signed by December 1, when Mexico
will install a new president.
President Donald Trump has threatened to leave Canada on the sidelines
since announcing a breakthrough with Mexico on Monday, but the US president
and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau both have expressed optimism a
deal is close.
“We are replacing NAFTA with a beautiful, brand new US-Mexico trade deal,”
Trump told a crowd in Evansville, Indiana Thursday night.
On Canada, he said: “I think it is going to happen and we really have
developed a really good relationship. But they have to treat us fairly. They
haven’t treated us fairly.”
The crucial phase of the US-Canada talks began Tuesday, after Mexican
officials spent five weeks shuttling to Washington to work out key issues on
auto trade and worker rights.
In a strange twist on the third day of talks, Freeland emerged from the
final late night meeting after only a few minutes, saying she just had a few
things to tell Lighthizer.
But earlier she told reporters the sides were “making progress,” and had
“covered a lot of ground.”
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US-CANADA-MEXICO-TRADE-NAFTA 2 LAST WASHINGTON
Officials will need to find compromises on issues that have created
friction between the neighboring countries, notably Canada’s dairy trade
rules and mechanisms to settle disputes and intellectual property
protections.
Freeland has declined to comment on the specific issues being discussed,
saying officials had agreed “we are not going to conduct our negotiation in
public.”
– Clock ticking –
Negotiators have worked for a year to update and rewrite the 25-year-old
free trade pact, but have rushed in the past six weeks to get it across the
goal line.
If the White House notifies Congress by Friday, it then would have until
September 30 to submit the final NAFTA agreement, but the sides will have to
have the major points ironed out.
Ottawa and Washington seem upbeat about the chances of reaching a deal,
but Trump is due to leave Washington just after midday on Friday for an event
in North Carolina, which may add to the time pressures if the US president
wants to be the one to announce any agreement.
The sticking points between Ottawa and Washington center on Canada’s
managed dairy market — something Trump has criticized frequently — and how
to handle some disputes among NAFTA partners, as well as patent protections
for medicines.
Trudeau has vowed not to give in to Washington’s demands to alter the
system under which Ottawa sets dairy production quotas and prices, with steep
tariffs on imports.
But Ottawa could offer US dairy farmers a small increase in market share
as it did with the EU in a free trade pact last year, in exchange for US
concessions on the NAFTA chapter on dispute resolution.
Freeland said she had remained in close touch with her Mexican and US
counterparts throughout the summer and had already achieved “a high-level
agreement with the US” on some of the pending issues on autos and labor
rights.
She also met this week with her Mexican counterparts, who remained in
Washington after announcing the breakthrough deal with the United States.
Mexico’s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said he expected to rejoin
his US and Canadian counterparts for trilateral talks.
The new NAFTA includes a higher percentage of locally-produced components
in autos, a requirement that a percentage of vehicles must come from high
wage factories, tougher worker protections and a provision to review the 16-
year deal every six years.
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