Should-Read: All of Canada, all of Mexico, and the U.S. business community think that Lighthizer has his head completely up his --- on NAFTA renegotiation. Certainly U.S. consumers would not benefit. And the furniture workers harmed by NAFTA implementation in 1993-1995 have retied, or moved to other types of jobs. Only labor-side ideologues trapped in the early 1990s and those who—like Donald Trump—wrongly believe that every bilateral trade deficit is always a national loss are in Lighthizer's corner.
I have no idea how Lighthizer expects to get any implementation legislation for TRAFTA through the congress at all—xenophobia and associated opposition to "globalists" and "rootless cosmopolites" seem to be the only cards Lighthizer has to play here. If I were him, I would quit now:
Shawn Donnan: Bitter differences over Nafta break into the open: "US trade chief Lighthizer urges Canada and Mexico to ‘give up a little bit of candy’...
...Bitter differences over how to update the North American Free Trade Agreement have broken into the open, as Donald Trump’s trade tsar accused Canada and Mexico of resisting the need for major change and warned US companies they would need to make sacrifices. “If you‘re going to get a deal everybody has to give up a little bit of candy,” Robert Lighthizer, the US trade representative, told reporters on Tuesday, as negotiators wrapped up their most substantive round of talks since the Trump administration launched a renegotiation in August. Mr Lighthizer, however, played down fears that the US planned to withdraw from Nafta, which covers more than a quarter of the global economy, any time soon. There were no “active” discussions to abandon it, he said, despite President Trump’s repeated threats. “We don’t really have a plan beyond trying to get a good agreement,” he said. But “if we do end up not having an agreement, my guess is all three countries will do just fine. There’s plenty of trade, and plenty of reasons to trade.”...
Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s foreign minister, said the US proposals were “unconventional” and warned they would “turn back the clock on 23 years of predictability, openness and collaboration under Nafta”. “This is troubling,” she said. The acrimony began last week after the US put forward a series of proposals that the US business community has dubbed “poison pills”. They include a requirement that the three countries review the deal every five years and actively opt-in, as well as a 50 per cent US-content requirement for cars made in North America, which the auto industry is fighting.
The US argues those and other new provisions are necessary to help reduce the US’s trade deficit in goods with Mexico. In the first eight months of this year this mounted to more than $47bn — second only to China in size. Meeting that goal is considered vital to win the approval of Mr Trump, who has called Nafta the worst trade deal ever struck and set the target of reducing the US’s $500bn annual deficit with the world as one of his major economic goals. It also highlights the almost impossible task facing Mr Lighthizer in the Nafta discussions. He must find a deal that Canada, Mexico and Republicans in Congress will accept, while also convincing Mr Trump that it amounts to a victory for him...
