3-nation effort to revise NAFTA will begin today
Of all the trade deals he lambasted on the campaign trail as threats to American workers, President Donald Trump reserved particular scorn for one: The North American Free Trade Agreement. The NAFTA agreement with Mexico and Canada was “the worst trade deal in history,” candidate Trump declared. He accused NAFTA of having swollen America’s trade deficit with Mexico, pulled factories south of the border and killed jobs across the United States.
Trump promised to renegotiate the 23-year-old deal — or walk away from it. Now the time has come. Five days of talks aimed at overhauling NAFTA begin today in Washington, with negotiations to follow in Mexico and Canada.
The United States has never tried to overhaul a major trade agreement and a new version of NAFTA would require approval from a divided Congress. Last month, the Trump administration listed its objectives for the renegotiation. Some of them will meet fierce resistance.
The administration has riled Canada, for example, by saying it wants to eliminate a dispute-resolution process established under NAFTA. That process lets Mexico and Canada appeal unfavorable rulings by U.S. courts and agencies in trade cases.
Renegotiating NAFTA is part of the administration’s plan to restore a chunk of the 7 million factory jobs America has lost since U.S. manufacturing employment peaked in 1979. NAFTA lured many manufacturers to Mexico to capitalize on cheaper labor.
But Matthew Gold, a former U.S. trade official who teaches at Fordham University’s School of Law, said robots and competition from China have played a bigger role in wiping out American factory jobs.
“Nothing in the NAFTA renegotiation will bring back that tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs that America lost to automation and to trade with China in the years since we entered into NAFTA,” he said.