Negotiators race against the clock in trade talks
‘Hoping to get this done’ by today’s U.S.-imposed deadline, Canadian official says
Top Canadian officials huddled in the prime minister’s office on Saturday as they negotiated into the night to reach a NAFTA agreement with the United States by a U.S.-imposed Sunday deadline.
Bloomberg News reported that the two sides were on the “cusp” of a deal. The Star’s Canadian sources were less definitive, saying they had made progress but that it was possible a deal would not be had by Sunday.
“The core issues are not settled,” a Canadian government official said at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, warning of efforts to create “deal momentum” in the media.
The official said the two sides were intending to give each other a “next to final” set of proposals to consider overnight.
Both sides are “hoping to get this done,” the official added.
The Saturday push was an attempt to reach an accord before the U.S. publishes the official text of its preliminary agreement with Mexico alone, which it has vowed to do by Sunday. Publishing the text would start a 60-day countdown to the possible signing of a deal that does not involve Canada.
Being left out of this initial text would not necessarily be a serious problem for Canada, which could still be added to the agreement in the following months. But the Canadian government was still looking to make a deal as quickly as possible.
In a sign of the seriousness of the latest push, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland postponed her scheduled Saturday speech to the United Nations General Assembly.
ACanadian official is now scheduled to give the address Monday, though it may no longer be Freeland.
Top negotiators for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — Freeland, U.S. Ambassador David MacNaughton, chief NAFTA negotiator Steve Verheul, and senior Trudeau aides Katie Telford, Gerald Butts and Brian Clow, among others — gathered in Trudeau’s office on Saturday, with Trudeau “involved” throughout as the day dragged into evening, one source said.
Among the unresolved issues were the fate of the current North American Free Trade Agreement’s Chapter19 dispute resolution system and its exemption for cultural industries, both of which Trudeau has insisted on keeping.
Also appearing unresolved was the level of access the U.S. would be granted to the highly protected Canadian dairy market. President Donald Trump complained again about Canada’s dairy protectionism at a campaign rally on Saturday night.
And the two sides haggled Saturday about what kind of protection Canada would get from the possibility of Trump imposing “national security” tariffs on Canadian-made cars. Sources said the protection might not be absolute.
One model for protection could be the preliminary deal the U.S. and Mexico arrived at in late August. The U.S. reserved the right to impose tariffs on Mexican cars, but only after a certain number of tariff-free Mexican imports that is signif- icantly higher than the actual current number.
It was not clear Saturday what would be done with the tariffs Trump has already imposed on Canadian steel and aluminum. The president of the Aluminium Association of Canada, Jean Simard, reacted with dismay to aGlobe and Mail report that the Canadian government “has now started to consider American proposals that would see Canada agree to quotas in exchange for the exemptions.”
Simard, who represents Cana- da’s producers of primary aluminum, said he had been assured by the Canadian government that quotas would be a “red line” it would never accept.
He said quotas would have “unintended consequences that will be to the detriment of the whole continental value chain.” “The moment you agree to quotas, you agree to stop growing your industry,” he said.
The Star could not confirm that the Canadian government had indeed budged on the issue.