Trump’s NAFTA redo hits snag as deadline nears

The Trump administration’s hopes for scoring a pre-midterm win by reworking the North American Free Trade Agreement are circling the drain.

U.S. trade negotiators are on the verge of blowing through their self-imposed Sept. 30 deadline for reaching a breakthrough with Canada. Major sticking points still divide the countries — including over access to Canada’s dairy market and the fate of a disputeresolution process — and officials on both sides acknowledge they are not close to resolving them.

In the face of the impasse, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Tuesday the Trump team is prepared to forge ahead alone with Mexico. But that approach invites both political and procedural problems.

Top congressional Republicans, whose support the administration will need to ratify a tweaked agreement, oppose leaving Canada behind. “Everyone’s desire is for this to be a threecountry agreement,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday. “That still is the top priority for everyone — Canada, the U.S., Mexico as well — and lawmakers.”

Business and labor groups likewise are largely united in demanding that policymakers keep all three countries in the fold. Americans for Farmers and Families — a coalition that includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Corn Growers Association and the Retail Industry Leaders Association — is leading a Twitter push today for preserving the pact, using the hashtag #NEEDNAFTA.

And it’s not clear that the Trump team could fast-track congressional approval for a Mexicoonly deal. The administration is seeking to rely on trade-promotion authority to submit an agreement for an up-or-down vote on Capitol Hill. When it invoked that process at the start of NAFTA talks last year, the administration pledged to include both neighboring countries in the final package. Some trade experts say a two-way agreement would not qualify.

According to a Tuesday tweet by Jennifer Hillman, a former U.S. trade negotiator in the Clinton administration who now teaches at Georgetown University, “Still don’t see how US-Mexico can be signed by Trump, given that required 90-day notification of intent to enter negotiations clearly specified negotiations with both Canada and Mexico to ‘modernize’ NAFTA. Bilateral deal is NOT modernization of NAFTA and not consistent w/notice.”

Yet the administration has been pushing to wrap up its work by Sunday, in part to conform to the schedule for fast-track consideration in Congress. The procedure requires that the Trump team give lawmakers 60 days to review the text of the deal before the president signs it. The administration wants to start that clock by Sunday, ensuring that Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto can sign the deal before handing power over to his successor on Nov. 30.