Steady hands lead Canada’s team
Methodical, ordered approach expected under ‘aggressive’ timeline to strike deal
OTTAWA Amid the bluster of political rhetoric across North America, trade negotiators are calmly preparing for a line-by-line renegotiation of NAFTA that’s likely to be a much quieter, more professional affair than the yelling match many fear.
While Canadians might feel jumpy after Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland outlined Canada’s asks Monday — many of which contradict U.S. President Donald Trump’s wishes — there’s an obvious lack of panic from actual negotiators on both sides.
A U.S. trade official explained Tuesday, in a background briefing for journalists, this will be a lot of sitting around tables looking at pieces of paper — a methodical, ordered approach, although under what they called an “aggressive” timeline.
The first round, which starts Wednesday and continues until Sunday, will have Canadian, Mexican and American negotiators putting preferred texts on the table and trying to mash together a combined document that includes final text all three agree on, and bracketed text that needs further discussion.
“We actually are going to be quite ambitious in this round. Lots of negotiations start with a discussion on background, rules and regulations, exchanging trade data and so forth. We have the advantage of having an agreement in place,” the official said, noting “a lot of” the chapters would be covered in initial tablings.
“We expect tables to be pretty covered over the next five days.”
Getting rid of the brackets, and deciding upon new (and trickier) chapters including ones on ecommerce and technology, will occupy officials through several rounds of negotiations in the coming months.
Canada and Mexico each have their own asks to bring to the table. Canada’s include adding new chapters on labour and the environment, as well as chapters concerning gender and Indigenous rights, although experts told the Post this week the latter two are peripheral to the three parties’ main goals.
It’s a “trend,” the American official noted, to keep adding more and more chapters to agreements.
Freeland’s key objectives, including maintaining supply management for agricultural products and keeping investor-state dispute mechanisms, had come as no surprise to the Americans.
“I think the foreign minister’s statement in Canada restated long-standing Canadian positions on some of those topics so we expected that, are prepared for that and look forward to working with them,” the official said.
Chief trade negotiators each have decades of experience and are directly familiar with each other. They’re bringing massive teams with them — about 28 actual tables will be set up for trade negotiators, and it is expected officials from other parts of each government will also be present to help with technical details.
The Mexicans, who face tall orders from the Americans, have chosen the head of trade from their U.S. embassy and a veteran of original NAFTA talks, Kenneth Smith Ramos, to act as chief negotiator.
The Americans are led by John Melle, a career trade official who serves as assistant U.S. Trade Representative for the Western Hemisphere.
On Canada’s side, both Liberals and Conservatives seem relieved and confident that Steve Verheul, who led negotiations of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Europe and was also involved in original NAFTA talks, is at the helm.
“We’re ready to go and we have what we need,” Verheul told parliamentarians at a Commons trade committee Monday. “We’ve done a lot of research on what the U.S. will be looking for. We have a good sense of what they’re going to bring to the table, and what the value of it is, and I think we’re certainly wellpositioned to respond to whatever might come, very well-prepared.”
Of American trade officials, Verheul said, “we know them well.”
Compare that to stronger language from political leaders in all three countries about preserving the national interest, and bombastic campaign-time statements from U.S. President Donald Trump on how NAFTA is the “worst” deal in history — despite apparent splits inside his administration between proponents and detractors of the agreement.
After this week’s talks, a second round will be held in Mexico in a few weeks, and a third is being scheduled in Canada. These will continue on a rotating basis until a preliminary deadline of late December or early January.
The reason for the speedy talks is a desire to conclude negotiations before the Mexican presidential election in July 2018 and before U.S. congressional midterms a few months later. “Canada and Mexico, I think, share our ambition in terms of the timetable,” said the official.
But Verheul was hesitant to jump on the bandwagon of an early deadline, saying it is difficult to predict how negotiations will go.
“You just negotiate as hard as you can and they always have a certain rhythm,” he said. “You never know when you’re going to get stalled, when you’re going to get delayed, or when you’re going to make huge breakthroughs that are going to accelerate the negotiation.”