At NAFTA Kickoff, U.S., Mexico And Canada Already Show Signs Of Disagreement

Officials from the U.S., Mexico and Canada met Wednesday to begin renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement. In an opening statement, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer praised President Trump for the fact that these negotiations were even happening.

"American politicians have been promising to renegotiate NAFTA for years, but today, President Trump is going to fulfill those promises," he said.

The agreement, crafted under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, went into effect in 1994. It eliminated tariffs on most goods traded among the three countries and imposed other rules in areas like intellectual property and labor standards. Wednesday's kickoff is the culmination of a process that began in May, when Lighthizer formally notified Congress that the administration would renegotiate the deal "to support higher-paying jobs in the United States and to grow the U.S. economy."

Trump made criticizing trade agreements a central part of his campaign, and his criticisms of NAFTA were at times grandiose: He called it the "worst deal ever made in the history of the world" and "a one-way highway out of the United States." Despite that tough talk, he said earlier this year he had decided that instead of "terminating" NAFTA, he would seek to renegotiate it.

Read more: http://kanw.com/post/nafta-kickoff-us-mexico-and-canada-already-show-signs-disagreement