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 23-year-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 that host or transmit 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.

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 stateowned enterprises.

But the latest USTR summary identified several American aims in which compromise will be hard to achieve.