New trade deal appears positive for N.L., premier says

But ‘devil is in the details,’ Ball says

With a new trilateral North American free trade pact seemingly a done deal, the impact it will have on this province is not yet altogether clear.

“But so far, it’s been positive news,” Premier Dwight Ball told reporters Monday morning at Confederation Building in St. John’s.

“It’s early. We need to get through the details, which will be discussed in a conference call with the prime minister.”

Ball said he and the other premiers were scheduled to speak to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau later in the day.

Late Sunday night, just hours to spare before an end-of-weekend deadline, a new trade agreement was reach between Canada, the United States and Mexico as negotiators in Ottawa and Washington worked around the clock, adding Canada to the deal that had already been reached between the U.S. and Mexico over the summer.

The deal — formerly the North American Free Trade Agreement — has a new name, the U.s.-mexico-canada Trade Agreement, or USMCA.

It will provide increased access to Canada’s dairy market for U.S. producers, and it puts a limit on the American impact on Canada’s supply management system for dairy and poultry products, which has been a bone of contention for U.S. President Donald Trump.

Few details have been made public yet.

“But so far, the early word is some of the key things that our negotiators were looking for in terms of the dispute recognition, mechanism for disputes, that will stay in place,” Ball said.

“So, there are some other questions. We’ll figure it out as we get through the fine print, in what it means to our province, but I think right now, for the most part, the general feedback is that people are very pleased to get this deal done to see free trade still existing between the largest trading partners in the world — between Canada and the U.S. And it’s important that it still remains trilateral, which means Mexico is still there.”

He said it also appears to preserve the key dispute-resolution provisions — Chapter 19 — which allow for independent panels to resolve disputes involving companies and governments, as well as Chapter 20, the government-to-government dispute settlement mechanism.

Ball said he had been up since 4 a.m. Monday reviewing the information he had on the new deal and expected to know more after discussions with Trudeau.

As for whether the new deal will clear up the newsprint issues in this province, Ball said, “I don’t know if you’re ever in the clear when you do that many transactions, nearly $2 billion a week going across those borders. You can expect there will always be disputes.”

However, he said it’s key to have a proper dispute mechanism in place.

“That’s what Chapter 19 does in this instance,” said Ball, adding he was pleased with the work that had been done to have the forestry exemption from softwood lumber and tariffs removed from newsprint.

“So far, right now, (there’s) little impact, but you know what? The devil is in the details.

“So, we’ll take a look at this text as we work our way through this. It’s a very, very big, long negotiation that has taken place. So, there is a lot of text and we’ll be going through that now.

“I look forward to the call with the prime minister in the next couple of hours.”