‘Bad’ stuff is eyed as NAFTA is reworked
Dispute over hiring practices
SOME PROVISIONS of the Trans-Pacific Partnership that President Trump quit as part of his pledge to protect American workers from “bad trade deals” may still serve to shape a revised NAFTA trade pact, according to U.S. officials and trade experts.
Trump threatened to ditch the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, too, but he eventually decided to renegotiate the pact in talks with Mexico and Canada that are due to begin in mid-August.
On Monday, U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer will offer insights into the administration’s strategy when he presents Congress its objectives for the NAFTA negotiations.
Several Trump administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Lighthizer will outline plans for updating NAFTA rather than seek a major overhaul of the agreement.
While the administration has said it hopes to complete NAFTA negotiations by the end of the year, there is no time line.
So far, the Trump administration has offered few specifics, other than expressing its desire to modernize the pact to account for digital trade that was in its infancy in the early 1990s and to tackle festering issues on labor, the environment, intellectual property rights and state-owned enterprises.
Since those areas have already been addressed in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiated under President Barack Obama, and agreed upon by Canada and Mexico, the pact provides a useful template, U.S. officials said. But they warned a final decision has not been made on using TPP language.
TPP requires members, for example, to allow independent unions, set working hours and safety standards and deter forced labor. It also has set higher environmental standards than any other previous U.S. trade deal.
Lawmakers from the U.S. industrial heartland particularly want to see enforceable labor standards that would lift Mexico’s chronically low wages, which they blame for U.S. factories migrating south of the border — and some want Trump to aim higher than the TPP terms.
“Donald Trump promised to get a better deal than TPP, and Americans are going to be deeply disappointed if he doesn’t follow through on NAFTA negotiations,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).