Canadian, Mexican, US Governors Defend NAFTA
Restricting trade will kill jobs across Canada, Mexico and the U.S., politicians agreed during the Washington International Trade Association's Feb. 23 panel on NAFTA. "That impulse to turn inward, to make trade less free, has to be resisted, in my opinion," Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne said. She, joined by Queretaro Governor Francisco Dominguez Servien and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, is in Washington to talk to U.S. administration officials and U.S. governors assembled for the National Governors Association Winter Meeting Feb. 23-26.
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Couillard said he had "yet to meet one governor who has not expressed support for NAFTA. Let's modernize it, but please, let's keep it. We need it." Like all the premiers and governors on the panel, he acknowledged it's time to update the agreement for an e-commerce world. "Modernized? Yes. Implode? No," he said. Gov. John Hickenlooper, the Democratic governor of Colorado, said that one of the biggest problems in American society is the divide between rural and urban communities. Exiting NAFTA, as President Donald Trump has threatened to do, would hurt farmers, and therefore most rural economies in the U.S. That would be "the worst thing we could do," he said.
The politicians spoke as if the possibility of a U.S. exit from NAFTA is quite real. "We have an uphill battle," Wynne said. "Like so many of you, I am relieved to see some progress made at the table, but we have a way to go." No one mentioned Trump by name, but they talked about some of the demands the U.S. has made at the table, and indirectly criticized the "my-way-or-the-highway" approach the administration has taken. Couillard said all negotiators have to understand the other parties' social and political realities, and that for Canada, which is more decentralized than the U.S., provinces will have to accept the final product. Hickenlooper said each bilateral or multilateral trade agreement "is always going to be filled with compromise."
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has suggested a renegotiated NAFTA should have a five-year sunset clause, and Wynne said that would be unacceptable, because of the uncertainty it would create for businesses. "There needs to be some systematic way of triggering a review," she said. "What has triggered this review is not a systematic or rational process." Chuckles rose from the audience of trade advocates, to which Wynne protested that hers was "not a political statement."