{"id":120796,"date":"2017-11-14T14:00:59","date_gmt":"2017-11-14T19:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=120796"},"modified":"2017-11-14T14:05:33","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T19:05:33","slug":"difficult-nafta-talks-resuming-after-impasse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2017\/11\/difficult-nafta-talks-resuming-after-impasse\/","title":{"rendered":"Difficult NAFTA Talks Resuming After ‘Impasse’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer complained that officials from Mexico and Canada are reneging on parts of the deal already agreed to by all sides.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trade representatives from the U.S., Canada and Mexico are scheduled to meet\u00a0in Mexico City for another round of negotiations to update the North American Free Trade Agreement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Last month’s discussions ended in what was described as an “impasse” that left the fate\u00a0of the agreement on potentially shaky ground.\u00a0Meanwhile,\u00a0President\u00a0Donald Trump has used his just-ended Asian tour to talk about his dislike of multilateral trade deals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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News on NAFTA!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Instead, as he traveled through Asia, Trump has talked up his preference for bilateral\u00a0trade deals with\u00a0trading partners, such as Japan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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At the same time one of the U.S. principal negotiators, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, has come under scrutiny for ties to Russian oligarchs through the\u00a0Bank of Cyprus where he served as vice chairman. Ross has described the reports of connections between\u00a0the\u00a0oligarchs and\u00a0Russian President Vladimir Putin as “false” and “evil.”<\/p>\n

(Commerce Secretary Ross under fire for Russian ties. <\/em>Click Here<\/a><\/span>\u00a0for the story.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Against\u00a0this backdrop,\u00a0the auto industry, manufacturers\u00a0and farmers are maneuvering to keep NAFTA\u00a0intact\u00a0despite the pressure for change from the Trump administration. Despite\u00a0warnings from leaders in those three sectors that a failure to reach a deal would be catastrophic, Trump continues posturing that he could have the U.S. simply pull out of the pact altogether.<\/p>\n

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Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is under fire due to unreported ties to Russia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Last month, U.S. Trade Representative Robert\u00a0Lighthizer\u00a0closed out the sessions complaining that Mexico and Canada had balked at demands by the U.S.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mexico, which is scheduled to elect a new President next summer,\u00a0said the discussions could impact cooperation with the U.S. on immigration.\u00a0Lighthizer\u00a0complained that Mexico and Canada aren\u2019t agreeing to what was already settled\u00a0in previous trade discussions involving the Trans Pacific\u00a0Partnership \u2014 an agreement\u00a0the\u00a0Trump administration repudiated\u00a0last January.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Welles Orr, a former assistant U.S. Trade Representative under George H.W. Bush, told Bloomberg that he expects a handful of deals \u201con noncontroversial items to at least keep the pace of negotiations going and so that they can at least claim they\u2019re making progress. The goal is to keep the ball rolling.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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With major disagreements looming on areas ranging from auto rules of origin to dairy market access and a sunset provision, ministers from the three countries have agreed to extend negotiating through the first quarter of 2018 \u2014 three months beyond their initial stated goal of wrapping up by year\u2019s end.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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(<\/em>Click Here<\/a><\/span>\u00a0for details about Trump\u2019s warning against NAFTA talks.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Meanwhile,\u00a0automakers continue to await the outcome of the negotiations, which could re-shape the automotive business in North America for years to come.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Under one scenario, if\u00a0the\u00a0North American Free Trade Agreement is dissolved, trucks produced in Mexico or Canada could be subjected to the chicken tax. Were that to happen, Toyota, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles could face immediate challenges with high import taxes on any trucks it had hoped to ship to the U.S.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Toyota is currently expanding Tacoma production in Tijuana, Mexico. By 2019, the automaker\u2019s pickup manufacturing in Mexico will have risen to around 260,000 units per year\u00a0\u2014 representing an almost billion-dollar investment between two plants. If NAFTA dissolves, every single one of those vehicles shipped north could be hit with a 25%\u00a0import fee.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThat is a risky strategy,\u201d Duncan Wood, director of the Washington-based Mexico Institute, told\u00a0Automotive News.\u00a0\u201cI think there is a very real probability that the NAFTA talks will fail \u2026 There\u2019s a great deal of pessimism at the moment here in Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Fiat\u00a0Chrysler\u00a0said it could wind up moving Ram production from Mexico to Michigan if NAFTA is phased out, which is probably why FCA has held off making any new product\u00a0announcements\u00a0about the future\u00a0of Warren Truck plant.<\/p>\n

(NAFTA talks bog down as sides take a recess. To get more detail<\/em><\/strong>,\u00a0<\/em>Click Here<\/a><\/span>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cProperly motivated,\u00a0(the move) could\u00a0be executed very quickly by FCA,\u201d CEO Sergio Marchionne told analysts during a conference call from earlier this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Officials from U.S., Canada and Mexico will meet in Mexico City for another tense round of negotiations to update NAFTA. Examine the stumbling blocks at TheDetroitBureau.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20009,"featured_media":120798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120796"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20009"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120796"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=120796"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=120796"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=120796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}