US and Canada to reach agreement on NAFTA

(Bloomberg) – US and Canadian negotiators could reach an agreement with the Nafta on Saturday, with the aim of avoiding a conflict that jeopardizes a $ 500 billion a year trade, said people familiar with the negotiations .

It is increasingly urgent to conclude a new North American Free Trade Agreement that could be released Sunday so that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto can sign it before he leaves. The United States and Mexico reached their own accord in August, triggering talks between the United States and Canada.

The United States and Mexico have suspended plans to publish the full legal text of their agreement on Friday, as US and Canadian negotiators rushed to the 30 September deadline.

Chrystia Freeland, Canada's foreign affairs minister and chief negotiator for the Nafta, on Saturday made a speech to the United Nations, spokesman Adam Austen said by e-mail, a signal of the Nafta surge. It is unclear whether she will travel to Washington for interviews.

The United States and Canada are about to reach an agreement after making progress on contentious issues, people said, on condition of anonymity, as negotiations continue. Although it is not guaranteed that a final agreement will be reached, no problem is too important today to be resolved, they said. The talks have been active in recent days, including at the United States General Assembly in New York.

'Serious Attempt'

"At the moment, we are trying very hard to resolve bilateral disputes between the United States and Canada," said Mexican Minister of Economy Ildefonso Guajardo on Friday.

Under US trade law, an agreement must be issued for 60 days before it can be signed by the leaders of the participating countries, allowing the negotiators to reach an agreement by November 30. Office.

The United States and Canada have been hooked on some fundamental questions. They understand:

What the United States wants to eliminate from Nafta and Canada wants to preserve An exemption for cultural sectors that Canada wants to preserve The use of section 232 investigations to enforce tariffs on steel, aluminum and possibly automobiles. Canada is seeking some kind of exemption or protection against the Canadian dairy sector, whose US wants better duty-free access to intellectual property and some pharmaceutical patents, each of which wants to extend tariffs. . However, this would upset North American supply chains and complicate the lives of American automakers. President Donald Trump said on September 26 that he refused a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau while he was at the United Nations in a trade stalemate and threatened automobile prices, calling them driver".

If the United States and Mexico attempt to advance a bilateral agreement without Canada, they may face delays in Congress, where key legislators have called for the format of the three countries to continue. Meanwhile, the existing NAFTA remains in force and any country can leave with six months' notice; no country has given such notice.

Automatic threat

Failure to reach an agreement opens the prospect of what some people call a zombie Nafta – a bilateral agreement to update a trilateral pact, even though the old agreement is still in force.

A former senior Canadian trade advisor warned that the threat of the car fare has an impact on anything else.

"The threats to Canada are much greater than a zombie potential Nafta; the threats come in the form of very devastating automobile rates for our economy, "said Meredith Lilly, former prime minister of Canada's trade advisor, Stephen Harper, and now Simon Reisman Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University Ottawa. "The risk of car rates should not be underestimated."