NAFTA deal possible

DEAL POSSIBLE BY END OF MARCH, SAYS CANADIAN ENVOY MACNAUGHTON

Trade deal possible by the end of March, says Canadian ambassador to the U.S. David MacNaughton

Canada’s ambassador to the United States said Monday he believes NAFTA negotiators can reach an agreement in principle by the end of March.

The upbeat assessment from envoy David MacNaughton comes in the face of the continuing threat from U.S. President Donald Trump to blow up the deal, which hangs over the final eight weeks in the current negotiating schedule.

MacNaughton refused to speculate on whether Trump is likely to pull out of NAFTA, but he said enough progress has been made on the “wiring and plumbing” of the agreement that all three countries can iron out their differences on the more substantial issues in the next two months.

“I would love to see a deal done,” the envoy said after an event in Ottawa with his U.S. counterpart, Kelly Craft. “We’ve made tremendous progress on some of the less spectacular things.”

Craft said little about the substance of the negotiations in her appearance with MacNaughton during a staged questionand-answer session at a conference on North American energy. But the two ambassadors did laud their close cooperation and the ties of friendship between Canada and the U.S.

Craft dropped a broad hint that she doesn’t find her president’s rhetoric helpful.

“When President Trump asked me to consider serving as U.S. ambassador to Canada, he promised that this would be very interesting and very, very important,” she said.

“I don’t really need him to continually say ‘tear up NAFTA’ to keep it interesting. A little bit of boring would have been just fine with me.”

MacNaughton said the time has come to leave political rhetoric behind and find a workable agreement in principle that officials can hammer out later.

“There are still four or five sticking points,” he said.

“I think if we roll up our sleeves and work hard on them we can at least get to the point where we’ve got an understanding, whether it be an agreement in principle or whatever it is, which we then allow technical people to work on.”

Two more rounds of negotiations are set to take place before presidential elections in Mexico and the U.S. congressional midterms, which observers fear could prove disruptive.