Trump says Dems use ‘con game’ on judge
Administration wants an agreement by this weekend.
President Donald Trump accused Democrats of trying to scuttle Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.
WASHINGTON — The United States appears virtually certain to miss its weekend deadline for reaching agreement with Canada on a new North American trade deal, according to U.S. officials and people close to the talks.
A downbeat U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer on Tuesday said negotiators are “sort of running out of time” to include Canada in the trade deal with Mexico, which was finalized last month.
The Trump Administration wants to notify Congress of its plans for a new North American accord by Sunday to meet a timetable permitting the current Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to sign it on his final day in office Nov. 30.
Major disagreements remain over Canada’s dairy management program, a dispute resolution process and the fate of U.S. tariffs on metals imports from Canada.
If the remaining gaps cannot be bridged in the next few days, the administration will request congressional approval of a deal with Mexico only, Lighthizer said in New York at the Concordia summit, an annual conference on policy issues.
“There’s still a fair amount of distance between us. There are very large issues,” Lighthizer said, playing down chances of a deal with Canada.
At a separate event in New York, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau showed no interest in accepting the U.S.-Mexico terms as written.
“There’s a possibility there to build on what they agreed, but we know that Canada’s interests are what we have to stand up for and we will,” Trudeau told the Council on Foreign Relations. “My focus on this throughout has been simply not escalating. Not opining. Not weighing in. My job is very simple. It’s to defend Canada’s interests, stand up for Canadians.”
The chief U.S. trade negotiator is scheduled to meet with Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York. But there is little chance of a last-minute deal, according to a senior administration official, who asked for anonymity to discuss confidential talks.
President Trump has long been a critic of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, blaming it for the loss of millions of American manufacturing jobs and the closure of thousands of factories.
Negotiations aimed at a new agreement have been underway for 13 months, but Canada and the U.S. remain at loggerheads. “There’s a whole series of issues,” said Eric Miller, president of Rideau Potomac Strategy, who has been briefed on the talks.
The administration is likely to face stiff opposition from key lawmakers and the business community to the idea of proceeding with a new trade deal without Canada, which ranks behind only China as a U.S. trading partner. More than $582 billion in goods last year crossed the northern U.S. border.
“It’s hard to imagine a scenario where we have a new arrangement with Mexico and regression with Canada. That just doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
Many U.S. labor unions, including the auto workers, have memberships that span the border and would also likely reject any proposal that excluded Canada, he said.