White House tells Congress it wants to renegotiate NAFTA,
Letter has few details on what changes are sought in trade deal.
Making good on WASHINGTON — a campaign promise, the Trump administration formally told Congress on Thursday that it intends to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico.
U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer sent a letter to congressional leaders Thursday, starting 90 days of consultations with lawmakers over how to revamp the pact. Talks with Canada and Mexico can begin after that.
The two-page letter offered few details about what changes the administration would seek in the 23-year-old pact that President Donald Trump has called “a disaster.” Lighthizer told reporters that any new deal should do a better job of protecting U.S. factory workers and should be updated to reflect new technologies.
Last month, White House aides spread word that Trump was ready to pull out of NAFTA. Within hours, the president reversed course and said that he’d seek a better deal first.
“We are going to give renegotiation a good strong shot,” Lighthizer said. He refused to say whether leaving NAFTA remained an option.
The trade agreement has been a lightning rod for criti- cism since it was being negoti- ated in the early 1990s. During the 1992 presidential campaign, independent candidate Ross Perot famously predicted a “giant sucking sound” as NAFTA pulled U.S. factory jobs south of the bor- der into Mexico. Campaign-
ing last year, Trump vowed to renegotiate NAFTA and
pull out of it he couldn’t get a better deal.
NAFTA took effect in 1994 and triggered a big increase in trade among the three countries. American farmers have mostly bene- fited from the reduction in trade barriers. But the pact did encourage American manufacturers to relocate some operations to Mexico to take advantage of cheaper
labor there; so critics blame NAFTA for wiping out U.S. factory jobs.
“Since the signing of NAFTA, we have seen our manufacturing industry dec-
imated, factories shuttered, and countless workers left jobless,” Commerce Secre- tary Wilbur Ross said in a statement. “President Trump is going to change that.”
In March, the administration circulated an eightpage draft letter on NAFTA that disappointed critics by appearing to keep much of the existing trade agreement in place.
Thursday’s letter had fewer specifics. Lori Wallach, director of Public Cit- izen’s Global Trade Watch, called it “markedly vague.” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi complained that “the president’s vague NAFTA letter is a stark contrast with the aggressive promises he made to hardworking families during the campaign.” But Republican congres
sional leaders promised to work with the administra- tion to craft a better deal.
“We look forward to work- ing with the administration to strengthen the agreement in a seamless way and ensure that we retain the current benefits for American work- ers, farmers and businesses,” said Texas Republican Rep. Kevin Brady, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
Mexico and Canada sig- naled that they welcomed the opportunity to modernize the agreement.
Gary Hufbauer, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, said the United States could seek modest “techno- cratic” changes, including provisions to update NAFTA to reflect technologies that have emerged since the orig-
inal agreement was negoti- ated. Or it could take a more aggressive approach, putting pressure on Mexico to reduce the trade gap, perhaps by dropping a value-added tax Mexico slaps on goods coming across the border.
Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, urged the administration to reach a deal quickly. Political pressures in 2018 — a presiden
tial election in Mexico and congressional elections in
the United States — could make it harder to seal an agreement next year.