Trump team irked by foot-dragging on NAFTA

WASHINGTON • U.S. President Donald Trump’s point man on the North American Free Trade Agreement is expressing frustration at the go-slow attitude of American lawmakers.

Wilbur Ross says their footdragging in launching the renegotiating process is detrimental to the United States.

Ross said the U.S. Congress has been slow on two fronts: in confirming Trump’s new trade czar, and in approving the formal notice that would launch the 90-day process before negotiations can start.

“It’s been frustratingly slow,” the commerce secretary said in an interview Sunday with Fox. “They’ve been very, very slow on completing the hearings and voting on our new U.S. trade representative Bob Lighthizer. That’s been not helpful.”

He said he had also hoped to get the formal 90-day notice done before the twoweek Easter break. It didn’t happen.

One reason is a misalignment of priorities. For Trump, updating NAFTA is a major campaign promise — but for many lawmakers, who by law must be consulted in negotiations, and who eventually would vote on the deal, NAFTA was neither a campaign promise nor a top priority.

Even the top lawmaker on trade-related files, the head of the Senate finance committee, Orrin Hatch, recently told reporters his main focus at that moment was getting Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch confirmed. The judge is now confirmed, but there’s another priority for Hatch, and for Congress, which likely supersedes NAFTA: comprehensive tax reform.

Because Lighthizer might need a congressional waiver to join the U.S. government, given past legal work for foreign countries, Democrats want something in return. In exchange for confirming the trade czar, some are demanding coal-miner pension guarantees in an upcoming fiscal bill.