Little hope of a breakthrough in latest round of NAFTA talks.
MEXICO CITY — Mexico is signaling both flexibility and doubt about the latest demands from Washington as the fifth round of talks on the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement formally opened Friday in the Mexican capital.
The fate of NAFTA has become a kind of national fixation in Mexico, where the almost quarter-century-old trade pact among the United States, Canada and Mexico has evolved into an economic mainstay.
Mexican officials have been walking a fine political line as they battle to maintain a deal seen as crucial to economic growth — and, at the same time, stand up publicly to what many here view as a bullying attitude from the Trump administration.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to pull out from NAFTA, labeling the pact a job-killing, factory shuttering disaster for U.S. workers since it came into effect on Jan. 1, 1994.
The latest round follows the most publicly contentious talks to date. Those discussions concluded last month in Arlington, Va., with the U.S. trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, aiming verbal blows at his Mexican and Canadian counterparts.
No major breakthroughs are anticipated during the current set of talks.
But part of the agenda here appears to be restoring a sense of progress to the stalled negotiations after a set of U.S. demands submitted in October raised considerable dismay among Mexican and Canadian negotiators.
In comments here this week, Mexico’s economic secretary, Ildefonso Guajardo, said that Mexico was willing to consider a modified version of one of Washington’s most incendiary proposals — a sunset clause that would terminate the tri-national trade deal every five years if it were not renegotiated.
Both Mexican and Canadian officials have vehemently rejected the sunset clause proposal, arguing that it would create too much uncertainty for foreign investors who crave long-term stability.
However, Guajardo told a radio interviewer this week that Mexico would consider an alternate plan in which participating nations would conduct thorough reviews of the pact every five years.
Mexican officials are hopeful that pro-NAFTA U.S. business sectors — including the agricultural and automotive industries — will weigh heavily in favor of maintaining the pact. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned that an American pullout would hit hardest some key swing states that Trump took on his road to power.
Authorities in Mexico also have hinted that Mexican cooperation with the United States in law enforcement, immigration and other key binational concerns could suffer should the Trump administration move to withdraw from NAFTA.
Officials from the three countries initially hoped to wrap up the talks by December. But the NAFTA negotiations are now expected to last at least until March and likely could be an issue in campaigning for the presidential election scheduled here for next year.