Trump Pushes for Quick NAFTA “Provisional” Agreement

The Trump administration hopes to declare conditional victory as early as next week in the continuing North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations, sources tell Bloomberg News.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is floating the idea of a provisional deal with his counterparts in Canada and Mexico. Bloomberg’s sources say the U.S. hopes to announce a framework for agreement during the Summit of the Americas, a global leadership conference in Peru on April 13-14.

Negotiations to update NAFTA have dragged on for months. Experts tell Bloomberg that it could take more than a year to finalize actual NAFTA revisions, even if the parties agree that accord is likely. But a speedy announcement of even a tentative agreement in principle would score valuable political points in all three countries.

For Trump, even the hint of accord would be a win for his aggressive trade policy. It also would aid his fellow Republicans by largely removing NAFTA as a campaign issue ahead of midterm elections in November.

Bloomberg notes the same is true in Canada, where the ability to declare a tentative victory would aid critical supporters of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ontario’s elections in June. Likewise in Mexico, a signal of future agreement in April would help defuse NAFTA a major political issue in presidential and Senate campaigns this summer.