The hope for NAFTA is renewed

Secretary of the Economy, Ildefonso Guajardo, said that on July 26 he will travel to Washington to resume the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with states United States and Canada.

At the end of the National Entrepreneurship Week presentation, which will take place from September 10 to 14, he assured that the meeting will initially be bilateral with the United States and will resume later with Canada .

"We will be going to Washington next week and we will be there on July 26th, resuming the negotiations.We will be the three countries, in this case we will start with a Mexico-EU bilateral agreement and will continue later in the year. other meetings with Canada, "he said.

For his part, US President Donald Trump also spoke about NAFTA and highlighted the progress of trade negotiations with Mexico. He emphasized the possibility of giving priority to a bilateral agreement with this country and to specify another with Canada.

In a meeting with his cabinet, Trump also spoke about the rapprochement of his government with the virtual elected president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador

"We had a very good session with Mexico, with the new Mexican president He won a landslide victory and we are doing very well in our trade deal, "Trump told the press

" We'll see what happens, we could make a distinction with Mexico and negotiate with Canada, but we have good discussions with Mexico. "

Negotiations for the modernization of NAFTA celebrate their first anniversary on August 16th. Mexico and Canada both insisted on the importance of maintaining the trilateral nature of the agreement

The White House said shortly after that it would maintain both "tracks". "in trade negotiations with Mexico and Canada. tracks. We are seeing a lot of progress in the negotiations with Mexico and if we can conclude a bilateral agreement with them, we would certainly be happy to do so, but we will continue in both negotiations, on both sides, "said spokeswoman Sarah. Sanders Joaquín López-Dóriga, the Minister of Economy said: "If the United States now wants a bilateralisation, assuming we agree, which is not the case in Canada and Mexico, its own internal rules would delay it too much, it would need permission to your Congress to start a new treaty different from the one we are negotiating … a Congress that worries already of his discretionary treatment of tariff issues, and who knows how long it will take to authorize it. "

" Signs that we have right now, who came to share with President Enrique Peña Nieto, Secretary of State, Secretary "

He said that it is technically possible that the NAFTA be published in five weeks; "We practically have the texts of everything, now politically we must be aware that we must have flexibilities of all parties to be able to arrive."

"The goal is to try to solve everything we can, we will have a few weeks to start putting some white and black, if we reach an agreement and prepare it at the same time in a process of dialogue with Canada, to finally be able to announce that there is already an agreement in principle by the end of August. "

He said that he could not go beyond the August 25 because the idea of ​​the government that is negotiating it, in the case of Mexico, is that this government sign it, and if it ends on August 25, it could be signed on November 25.

"What I heard very clearly, it is that the next government intends to try to solve the problem of NAFTA before the end of this administration, says the official.