U.S. updates new NAFTA demands as talks continue
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s top trade official has issued new objectives for renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement — including some likely to irk Canada and Mexico, as well as the U.S. recording industry and other major business interests, as talks continued this weekend.
There are few surprises in the 17-page document, given recent revelations and sharp words from NAFTA negotiators. But the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, or USTR, made some additions and changes to the blueprint it initially outlined in July, a month before talks began, adding a fresh degree of uncertainty to the talks.
Besides affirming that the administration wants to rewrite portions of the 23year-old pact, including access to federal government contracts and minimum local-sourcing requirements, the USTR made clear it wants to pry open Canada’s protected dairy market and eviscerate a process in which foreign firms can sue governments for discrimination or expropriation.
The amended summary was released late Friday and came after Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and civil society groups had criticized the USTR for failing to update the public on NAFTA renegotiations as required by law. Wyden had held up confirmation of two deputy USTR nominees as a result.
Among the updated goals is new language that the U.S. would seek to limit liability for internet giants like Google, Facebook and Comcast that host or transmit online content — a move that will be opposed by America’s music and recording industry, whose sales have been battered by piracy.
In a September letter to the USTR, Robert Lighthizer, associations for musicians and record labels argued that inserting safe harbors in NAFTA for online firms would amount to “an open invitation to America’s trading partners to act as havens for piracy and refuges for those who illegally infringe American creative content.”
The internet was in its infancy when NAFTA was signed in 1993, but just who in the online world and to what degree they will be shielded from spreading unauthorized copyrighted content, or even fake or biased news, remain unsettled.
That’s why this is “a big deal,” said Nate Olson, a trade expert at the nonpartisan Stimson Center think tank, reacting to the new USTR objective.
As far as NAFTA negotiators are concerned, they have mostly found common ground on digital trade, and the three parties also have made significant progress on issues related to competition policy, customs, telecommunications and state-owned enterprises.
But the latest USTR summary identified several American aims in which compromise will be hard to achieve.
U.S. officials stated, for example, that it would work to eliminate “unjustified measures” limiting U.S. dairy into Canadian markets. For apparent emphasis, the USTR inserted that one of its major goals would be addressing import and export monopolies that distort trade.
Among the most contentious is a U.S. proposal that would allow NAFTA to expire after five years unless all three countries agree to renew it. Mexico and Canada, as well as U.S. businesses, say such a sunset clause would inject uncertainty and undermine the value of the pact. In the summary, the USTR merely states that it wants a mechanism to “assess the benefits of the agreement on a periodic basis.”
Nor did the USTR specify how much it wants to strengthen the “rules or origin” for trade in autos, that is, the minimum percent of a vehicle’s production that must originate in North America — and specifically the U.S. — before it can enter duty-free in any of the NAFTA countries.
The talks in Mexico City this weekend are the fifth round of negotiations and will last through Tuesday. The three sides had originally hoped to wrap up by year’s end, but the talks have been extended to as late as March.