NAFTA, NEW & LESS IMPROVED.

It’s often said — it has been said on this page — that regional free- trade agreements are about managed trade, not free trade. If you want free trade, you don’t need an agreement. You just say: Foreign goods will be let in free. Period. Instead, most regional agreements both carve out exceptions where the partners won’t even try for free trade ( think: softwood lumber) and also establish rules of origin that, instead of simply preventing third- party goods from coming in under the guise of partner-country goods, provide extra jolts of stealth protection for local producers.

But until now, such deals have at least held up free trade as an ideal. The list of negotiating goals the U.S. published Monday doesn’t do that. It says :“Most importantly, the new NAFTA will promote a market system that functions more efficiently, leading to reciprocal and balanced trade among the parties.” The new NAFTA “will reflect a fairer deal, addressing America’s persistent trade imbalances in North America.”

True free trade means: you eliminate barriers to trade; people and businesses on both sides of the border go at it; and the chips (and shakes, shingles, logs, plywood sheets and all other goods and services) fall where they may. Trade balances just don’t enter into it. “Reciprocal” trade doesn’t enter into it. You may hope for and work toward reciprocity in the negotiations and the policy c hang es—i.e ., you reduce your trade barriers as we reduce ours. But “reciprocal trade” just isn’t a concern.

What does it mean, anyway? That all three member countries have to trade back and forth in each and every product? That there have to be U.S. lumber exports to match Canadian lumber exports? That there has to be a Canadian concession on regulation to match each and every U.S. concession one very one of its regulations? That both countries going to zero regulation in a sector isn’t acceptable unless, in doing so, each has reduced its regulation by the identical amount?

And how does the expressed concern about the trade balance get reflected in the deal? Will there be specific language that if one country (guess which!) is running a big deficit, it gets to put its pre- agreement trade restrictions back into place while the other partners have to stick with their concessions? Or will there negotiation itself involve the U.S. not making as many concessions, or maybe going back on 1994 concessions, in sectors where it currently has a trade deficit?

A common reaction to the release of the U.S. document has been that it’ s reassuringly wonky. The National Post’s Gary Clement had ( yet another) brilliant cartoon on that theme this week. Wonkiness is reassuring because it means the usual faceless negotiators will be in charge. Also, Donald Trump won’t pay any more attention to the details of NAFTA than he did to the details of Obamacare. (Any bets as to how far he got reading the U.S. negotiating statement, which runs to 26,000, not 140, characters ?)

Yes, what the deal really does will be in the details yet to be negotiated rather than the shibboleths contained in its foreword. But the shibboleths count, too. Aiming for a world in which all countries lower their anti- foreigner measures as much as possible so that competition among companies and individuals determines what gets traded in which direction is one thing — and a good thing! Aiming for a world in which each country — or, more likely, each big country — has what it deems a tolerable trade deficit is quite another.

Granted, there is hypocrisy in writing trade deals that espouse idealistic goals but embody regional protectionism, as many regional deals have done. But hypocrisy can be a useful social lubricant.

The original NAFTA, which is now supposedly so unsatisfactory, was criticized by non- North Americans for setting up a Fortress North America ( modelled on Fortress Europe, of course) with aggressive rules of origin that pushed goods- producers toward North American suppliers if they wanted their products to qualify for tariff- free shipment across North America’s borders.

Trade idealists who went along with such stealth protectionism regarded it as an unfortunate necessity of democratic politics: to get a deal that moved you closer to the ideal, you had no choice. But now the U.S. document sets up this kind of North American protectionism as a laudable goal of there negotiation, not a regrettable political reality.

In the end, words matter. Whatever provisions are negotiated, it will make a difference if, two years from now, the three amigos — who I’m betting will be less friendly than they once were — sign not a North American Free Trade Agreement but a North American Producer Protection Pact, which is where the Americans seem to want this thing to go.

THE U.S. SETS UP NORTH AMERICAN PROTECTIONISM AS A LAUDABLE GOAL, NOT A REGRETTABLE POLITICAL REALITY.