WASHINGTON—U.S. President Donald Trump’s top trade official opened the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement with harsh criticism of the deal, saying it has “fundamentally failed” many Americans and cannot not be fixed with mere “tweaking.”“We cannot ignore the huge trade deficits, the lost manufacturing jobs, the businesses that have closed or moved, because of incentives, intended or not, in the current agreement. The numbers are clear,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in his introductory speech. “The U.S. government has certified that at least 700,000 Americans have lost their jobs due to changing trade flows resulting from NAFTA. Many people believe the number is much, much bigger than that.”Trump, Lighthizer said at a hotel in Washington, “is not interested in a mere tweaking of a few provisions and a couple of updated chapters. We feel that NAFTA has fundamentally failed many, many Americans and needs major improvement.”Lighthizer’s remarks underscored the vast gulf between the U.S. and the other two parties to the agreement, Canada and Mexico, whose representatives hailed NAFTA in their own opening statements at a hotel in Washington.Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland called NAFTA “an engine of job-creation and economic growth,” and she argued that trade between Canada and the U.S. has been “almost perfectly” balanced — though she pointedly noted that Canada does not believe trade deficits or surpluses are the best way to measure if a trade relationship is working.“Canada is and always has been a trading nation. Our approach stems from one essential insight. We pursue trade, free and fair, knowing it is not a zero-sum game,” Freeland said.Freeland called NAFTA a “landmark pact,” saying it had produced significant growth in the Canadian economy. She arg ...
|