Ottawa NAFTA round talks crawl as Trump threat lingers with no major progress
Posted Sep 27, 2017 05:11:43 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The third round of North American Free Trade talks ends Wednesday with the spectre of an eventual American withdrawal by President Donald Trump growing larger because of stalled progress on major issues.
The slow pace of the Round 3 talks is being widely blamed on the lack of concrete proposals being brought by the U.S., but there are grumblings about a lacklustre showing by some Canadian negotiators.
That is stoking broader fears that an impatient Trump could trigger NAFTA’s withdrawal clause if he doesn’t see a win for the U.S. by years’ end.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland held separate meetings with her U.S. and Mexican counterparts before she and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo had their final joint talk today.
The talks are ending a day after the U.S. Department of Commerce proposed a hefty 219 per cent countervailing duty on jets manufactured by Montreal’s Bombardier, further straining the Canada-U.S. trading relationship.
A rift emerged also Tuesday with unions saying Canada was facing opposition from the United States and Mexico on its proposal to raise labour standards – targeting what are seen as anti-union practices in more than two dozen U.S. states and improving the plight of Mexican workers.
