[CTC] Reports from the NAFTA hearing

[Arthur Stamoulis]

Two articles below...

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/06/27/do-no-harm-us-industries-plead-with-trump-administration-at-nafta-hearing.html <https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/06/27/do-no-harm-us-industries-plead-with-trump-administration-at-nafta-hearing.html>
‘Do no harm,’ U.S. industries plead with Trump administration at NAFTA hearing

A wide variety of business groups hailed the agreement as essential, but they also raised concerns about Canada.

 
The first day of Washington hearings on NAFTA demonstrated how powerful U.S. corporate interests will serve as key Canadian allies, providing a domestic check on U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionist instincts.  (STEPHEN CROWLEY / THE NEW YORK TIMES)  
By DANIEL DALE <https://www.thestar.com/authors.dale_daniel.html>Washington Bureau
Tues., June 27, 2017
WASHINGTON—The fashion industry. The tile manufacturers. The wheat growers. The corn growers. Even the pet food lobby.

A variety of U.S. business interests arrived at the first day of Washington hearings on the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement with an identically phrased plea to the Trump administration: “Do no harm.”

U.S. President Donald Trump calls NAFTA a “catastrophe” that privileges Mexico and Canada while hurting America. But most of the industries that testified Tuesday described the agreement as essential, albeit imperfect, and urged the administration to protect their gains above all else.

“Let’s not mess with what has worked,” said David Spooner, a lawyer representing the Tile Council of North America. “The industry is growing, and it is growing under NAFTA.”

“It is difficult to improve upon the duty-free unlimited access to Canada and Mexico. So please: Do no harm and do not jeopardize our access,” said Kevin Kester, president-elect of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

“U.S. pet food makers have a reliable and profitable trading partner to our north,” said Peter Tabor, a vice-president at the Pet Food Institute.

The government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is strongly supportive of NAFTA. The hearing demonstrated how powerful U.S. corporate interests will serve as key Canadian allies, providing a domestic check on Trump’s protectionist instincts.

But it was not all kumbaya. At least five industry representatives proposed changes to aspects of their trade relationship with Canada. The breadth of their concerns — from dairy to steel to Super Bowl ads — underscores the complexity of the task before American, Canadian and Mexican negotiators when talks begin in August.

Some of the Canada-related issues may be easy to address. Shortly after a representative for U.S. wheat growers complained of Canada’s practice of automatically grading U.S. wheat imports as poor “feed-quality,” the president of Canada’s cereals industry group, Cam Dahl, said in an interview that they support the change the Americans want.

Other issues raised on Tuesday, though, do not have simple solutions.

An executive from the National Milk Producers Federation, Jaime Castaneda, slammed Canada’s dairy supply-management system, a long-standing U.S. gripe. And he claimed that Canada has now moved from unfair domestic protectionism to selling milk unfairly cheap on global markets.

An executive at the Dairy Farmers of Canada, Yves Leduc, said in an interview that the U.S. claims were self-serving, hypocritical and inaccurate.

The leader of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, Bill Bullard, urged the U.S. to use NAFTA talks to resurrect a law requiring that meat be labelled by its “country of origin.” The law, opposed by Canada, was repealed under Barack Obama in 2015.

Hollie Noveletsky, a board member at the American Institute of Steel Construction, complained that Canadian steel exports are driving American companies out of business. She claimed that underpriced “dumped” steel from countries outside North America is being imported by Canada and then redirected into the U.S. under NAFTA’s favourable terms.

Eric Schwartz, a lawyer for the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a group representing industries that produce copyrighted material like books and movies, complained of insufficiently strong incentives for Canadian Internet providers to crack down on piracy and illicit streaming. And he said Canada was using “overly broad exceptions” to deny U.S. publishers access to the education market.

National Football League executive Jocelyn Moore suggested that the NAFTA update could be used to crack down against the “discriminatory actions” Canada’s television regulator took against its intellectual property by allowing U.S. ads to air on Fox during the Super Bowl, allegedly hurting the ratings of the separate broadcast put on by Canadian rights-holder Bell Media.

The hearing will continue on Wednesday and Thursday. Government officials will likely hear a more critical view of NAFTA from labour unions and activist groups on Wednesday.



Rep. Pascrell faults USTR for not opening NAFTA objectives for comment
June 27, 2017
 
House Ways & Means trade subcommittee ranking member Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) today criticized the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative for not offering stakeholders the opportunity to comment on the negotiating objectives of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
 
Pascrell’s critique came during the first day -- June 27 -- of USTR’s three-day public hearing on the NAFTA renegotiation.
 
“It is significant that for NAFTA, USTR is at this stage still asking for help in explaining why it is undertaking these negotiations in the first place,” Pascrell said. “This highlights a fundamental problem that this Administration has presented for the NAFTA negotiations and for the U.S. trade agenda as a whole. We in Congress -- and the American public and the companies and stakeholders that make up the American economy -- are completely in the dark when it comes to what the Administration intends to do, why, and for whose benefit.”
 
According to Pascrell, USTR has previously given stakeholders and Congress the chance to comment on negotiating objectives. USTR must issue its negotiating objectives at least 30 days before trade negotiations begin. The earliest the NAFTA talks can start is Aug. 16 -- 90 days after USTR notified Congress of its intent to renegotiate the deal. If talks were to start on Aug. 16, USTR would have to put forward its negotiating objectives by July 17.
 
In a June 12 letter informing USTR of his intent to testify at the hearing, Pascrell also decried the office’s apparent dismissal of congressional Democrats in the drafting of its notice to Congress to renegotiate NAFTA.
 
“The Administration's actions made it apparent it was only interested in working with the Congressional Republican leadership in drafting this notice, which is surprising, because these same Members have been rubber-stamping an outdated trade policy in desperate need for reform,” Pascrell wrote. “It is imperative that the Administration work more closely with the Committee on Ways and Means and Congressional Democrats as this process moves forward.”
 
The administration initially sent a draft notice of its intent to renegotiate NAFTA only to Republicans <https://insidetrade.com/node/158110> on the Senate Finance and House Ways & Means committees.
NAFTA should incorporate enforceable labor and environmental provisions as set forward in the May 10, 2007 agreement reached between the George W. Bush administration and congressional Democrats, Pascrell said. The administration should also verify that the labor provisions are fully implemented before a modernized NAFTA goes into effect, he said.
 
Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI), the former Ways & Means chairman and ranking member, also testified at the public hearing <http://levin.house.gov/press-release/levin-testimony-ustr-nafta-hearing>, saying that the top priority of the administration should be on implementing labor standards that will lead to the overhaul of Mexico’s current system. According to Levin, Mexico does not currently meet May 10 standards.
 
“Mexico is so far out of compliance with May 10th that during the re-negotiation they must dismantle their current system,” he said. “Change to Mexico’s labor regime is not an issue for the time period after Congress votes and before the agreement comes into force. It is an issue for now. Any other approach will not even enable you to call NAFTA re-negotiated, and it will be vigorously opposed in Congress and in America’s heartland.”
 
Levin took particular exception to Mexico’s use of “protection contracts,” which the U.S. Department of Labor has described <https://insidetrade.com/node/155084> as contracts that are used to “‘protect’ against collective bargaining by independent, democratic workers' organizations.”
 
“NAFTA re-negotiation must insist that every protection contract is eliminated and that workers are able to bargain collectively for a new contract,” Levin said.
Levin said Mexico’s subpar labor standards are driving down U.S. wages and that if the renegotiations does not address the issue, it will not pass Congress.
 
 “If we do not address this major distortion in the marketplace, NAFTA will not be any different,” he said. “And it will fail to get the votes to pass in Congress. The majority of Democrats in the House opposed NAFTA for this very reason over 20 years ago, so we will be together in our insistence that the Mexican labor regime must be totally scrapped and re-built from the bottom up.” -- Brett Fortnam (bfortnam at iwpnews.com <mailto:bfortnam at iwpnews.com>)
 
 
 

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