<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-nafta-trade-renegotiation-234544" style="color: rgb(149, 79, 114);" class="">http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-nafta-trade-renegotiation-234544</a><o:p class=""></o:p></div><h1 style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 24pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Trump: I want to speed up NAFTA renegotiation<o:p class=""></o:p></h1><p class="byline" style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">By <span class="vcard"><a href="http://www.politico.com/staff/madeline-conway" target="_top" style="color: rgb(149, 79, 114);" class="">Madeline Conway</a></span><o:p class=""></o:p></p><p class="timestamp" style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">02/02/17 12:18 PM EST<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would like to “speed” up the process of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">In a meeting with senators in the White House, Trump again complained about NAFTA, a frequent target of his ire on the campaign trail. As he has before, the president charged that the trade agreement, signed into law in the 1990s, has been a “catastrophe” for American jobs and workers and asserted that he wants to “change it.”<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">That change, Trump said, could take the form of a “new NAFTA” or “renovation of NAFTA,” but regardless, he wants it done quickly.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">“I would like to speed it up if possible,” Trump said, without offering specifics on what kind of agreement such a renegotiation should ultimately yield. “You're the folks that can do it, senator. So important.”<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Trump’s comments signal that the president will continue to prioritize trade during his first days in office. During his first week, he pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multilateral trade agreement with mostly Asian countries that was negotiated under former President Barack Obama.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">The new president has been a harsh critic of what his adviser Steve Bannon calls “globalism.” Trump has advocated trade and immigration policies that go against decades of established protocol in how the U.S. engages with the world, and in the case of his critique of free trade, he has also bucked Republican orthodoxy.</p></body></html>