TRADE ENVOY URGES SWIFT CLOSURE OF NAFTA TALKS AS MEXICO VOTE APPROACHES.
TRADE
OTTAWA• Canada’ s ambassador to the U.S ., David MacNaughton, called Monday for a swift closure of North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations, saying upcoming elections in Mexico threaten to complicate future talks.
The initial deadline for NAFTA talks was set for the end of 2017, but was later extended to March 31. Observers have warned that stretching beyond that March deadline would cause the negotiations to bump up against the Mexican general election, scheduled for July 1.
“If you go past that, you really do run into the Mexican election which does provide some constraints,” MacNaughton told reporters in Ottawa after at an event with his U.S. counterpart, Kelly Craft. “It’s not the end of the world — we will continue to negotiate as long as people want to negotiate — but I think it would be better for everyone if we could come to some agreement sooner than that.”
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the main opponent of Mexico’s right-leaning incumbent government, has promised to scrap energy reforms if he is elected in July, reversing a key bright spot in trade negotiations between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. López Obrador has also proposed other populist and anti- trade policies that threaten to derail NAFTA talks.
The time has come to leave political rhetoric behind and find a workable agreement in principle that officials can hammer out later, MacNaughton said.
“There are still four or five sticking points,” he said.
MacNaughton also stressed t hat prolonged NAFTA talks continue to cause business investment to slow, echoing comments by Bank of Canada officials in recent weeks.
Mac Na ugh ton’ s comments came during an event in Ottawa hosted by the Energy Council of Canada, where he and Craft, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, discussed energy trade between the two countries.
Energy trade between Canada and the U.S. has remained among the least contentious issues amid NAFTA negotiations between the three countries. Canada, Mexico and the U.S. trade roughly US$ 200 billion in energy products every year through its highly integrated infrastructure network.
Investors in the U.S. and elsewhere are also keen to permanently secure recent reforms in Mexico’s energy industry, which opened up its sizable oil and gas fields to foreign investment.
“We will ensure t hat NAFTA 2.0 maintains dutyfree trade in energy goods and locks in Mexico’s 2013 energy market reforms,” Craft said.
The ambassador’s comments come amid reports that NAFTA talks are beginning to see a potential for an eventual deal.
Still, many of the major sticking points remain unresolved, and Canada has toughened its tone in recent weeks.