[CTC] NAFTA talks in Washington could reach deal on some chapters

Tue Nov 28 05:20:36 PST 2017

While ISDS, ROO, review and other key issues remain deadlocked, the two articles below touch on NAFTA chapters that are progressing….

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trade-nafta-mexico/nafta-talks-in-washington-could-reach-deal-on-some-chapters-mexico-minister-idUSKBN1DR2MR?il=0 <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trade-nafta-mexico/nafta-talks-in-washington-could-reach-deal-on-some-chapters-mexico-minister-idUSKBN1DR2MR?il=0>

REUTERS

NAFTA talks in Washington could reach deal on some chapters: Mexico minister
Dave Graham, Reuters                                              
November 27, 2017

The next meeting of U.S., Mexican and Canadian officials to overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will begin on Dec. 11 in Washington, and they could reach agreement on some major chapters of the deal, Mexico's economy minister said on Monday.

Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said that the Washington round, at which ministers will not participate, should register more advances in topics such as telecoms, e-commerce, technical barriers to trade and regulatory practices.

"There are things we can make progress on," he told Reuters, adding that those chapters could close during the discussions.

Guajardo said the talks would extend through the week from Dec. 11. Two other NAFTA sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the talks were scheduled from Dec. 11-15. One said they could involve meetings before and after those dates.

The talks follow a round in Mexico this month where the three sides failed to make major breakthroughs on the most contentious issues, prompting the Trump administration to complain about the lack of progress.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of NAFTA unless he can rework it in favor of the United States, spooking investors and putting pressure on the Mexican peso.
Mexican officials had hoped to close chapters on telecoms and e-commerce in the November round.

However, discussions over telecommunications became mired in disagreement over how to incorporate Mexico's 2013-14 reform, which imposed regulatory curbs on America Movil, the Carlos Slim-controlled company that dominates the market.

A major element of the reform was struck down by the Mexican Supreme Court in August, yet U.S. negotiators wanted the NAFTA chapter to include the original version, officials say.

Guajardo said he was confident that agreement could be reached in wording the telecoms chapter in a way that applied the rules for all three nations, not singling out Mexico.

"I don't see it as an obstacle," he said. "It's simply a case of fine-tuning on how we express it."

Mexico has major reservations about a number of U.S. proposals, none more so than a plan to raise the required North American content in autos to 85 per cent from 62.5 per cent, as well as ensure half the total content is from the United States.

Guajardo said after the previous talks that Mexico would make a counter-suggestion on the auto proposal once the United States had explained the feasibility of its plans.

Mexico made a tit-for-tat counterproposal to one U.S. plan to limit Mexican and Canadian access to public tenders, earning words of grudging respect from the U.S. side. However, Guajardo said that strategy would not work on all the tough issues.

"We can't project this solution for everything. Because there are things that are deep in our neighbors' hearts," he said, pointing to the auto content proposal.

INSIDE US TRADE
NAFTA negotiators move forward on biotech; Canada tables indigenous rights chapter

November 22, 2017 
At the fifth round of NAFTA talks, which ended on Tuesday, negotiators for the U.S., Canada and Mexico made significant progress in advancing rules on biotech approvals that are expected to go beyond what the countries agreed to as part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, sources told Inside U.S. Trade.

Meanwhile, Canada tabled its proposal on indigenous rights – a key aspect of what Prime Minister Trudeau calls his progressive trade agenda.

Multiple industry sources said negotiators on biotech met at length on Monday and again on Tuesday in Mexico City – discussions that were attended by technical officials on the Mexican side who had been unable to travel to other negotiating rounds. Sources said the presence of the technical staff was a main reason discussions on biotech were able to advance.

U.S. and Canadian agriculture groups have identified biotech approvals as an area ripe for modernization, with the best-case scenario involving a mutual recognition of approvals within the NAFTA region.

Had the Trump administration not decided to withdraw the U.S. from the deall, TPP would have been the first U.S. trade agreement that addressed biotech approvals. TPP established transparency measures for such approvals; a process for parties to follow if unauthorized trace amounts of a biotech trait were found in a shipment; and a working group to continue discussions.

Industry sources said they believed NAFTA's biotech provisions could go farther than TPP because NAFTA countries are more prepared to implement new measures than some TPP countries were. The U.S. suggested at the first round <https://insidetrade.com/node/159970> of NAFTA negotiations that biotech was an area in which the deal could be modernized.

Work at the fifth round centered on making technical progress on a host of issues, including sanitary and phytosanitary measures, good regulatory practices and others. No chapters were closed.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, Canada's political lead in the talks, told reporters on Tuesday in Ottawa that Canada has tabled text on indigenous rights.

The indigenous chapter focuses on reaffirming the importance of indigenous tribes to the economy, advancing the economic development of indigenous people and recognizing the important of intra-tribal trade, according to sources familiar with Canada's position. The chapter would explore what cooperative activities are possible on indigenous rights and focus on making sure that trade benefits indigenous groups. It would also set up a committee or working group to oversee the chapter's operation.

Sources close to the negotiations lamented gaps on other chapters, such as one on intellectual property, as well as a lack of progress on political-level issues including auto rules of origin, dispute settlement and trade remedies.

Freeland said progress in the talks has been stymied by the U.S. commitment to what Canada and Mexico view as unworkable proposals.

“These are proposals that we simply cannot agree to,” Freeland said, referring to the auto rule-of-origin and dispute settlement proposals. “What we’ve done in some of those areas is ask for a better understanding of those proposals. We really feel that a fact-based approach is the way to get a good result.”

She said one of Canada's goals at the round was to better understand the premise of U.S. positions and – specifically on the auto rule of origin – elaborate on why Canada believes the U.S. proposal would negatively impact both the U.S. and Canada. The U.S. has proposed upping NAFTA's auto regional value content to 85 percent and adding a 50 percent U.S. content requirement.

According to Freeland, the Canadian team presented data she said showed that the U.S. proposal would harm the integrated U.S.-Canadian auto sector.

“I think really getting an understanding based on those facts and these aren’t facts that the Canadian negotiators have invented for ourselves,” she said. “These are facts we’ve gained from working very hard with industry on both sides of the border. It’s that fact based approach that we’ve really been pushing.”

But a senior U.S. official this week lambasted Canadian and Mexican requests for an analysis of the U.S. auto rule-of-origin proposal as a “sideshow <https://insidetrade.com/node/161122>” and called for the countries to come forward with counterproposals to further true negotiations. – Brett Fortnam(bfortnam at iwpnews.com <mailto:bfortnam at iwpnews.com>)

Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.citizenstrade.org/pipermail/ctcfield-citizenstrade.org/attachments/20171128/422e4f1d/attachment.html>