Despite withering criticism of the trilateral trade deal, the Trump administration late Sunday announced that the NAFTA free-trade zone covering the U.S., Canada and Mexico will remain largely intact, with a new name and some key updates.
Both Canada and the U.S agreed to important concessions in the last-ditch deal to salvage the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement, rescuing a three-country, $1.2 trillion open-trade zone that Trump had threatened to upend after nearly a quarter century in existence.
“Throughout the campaign, I promised to renegotiate NAFTA, and today we have kept that promise,” Trump said Monday announcing the deal. Later Monday, he pushed back on the notion that it’s merely an updated version of the previous pact.
“It’s not NAFTA re-done. It’s a brand new deal,” the president said during a press conference at the White House Rose Garden.
The updated agreement, the subject of more than a year of intense negotiations between the countries, includes some high-profile compromises from both Washington and Ottawa.
The U.S., for example, won expanded access to Canadian markets for U.S. dairy producers, long a major sticking point for the Trump administration. For its part, Canada won a key concession from U.S. negotiators that preserved a dispute resolution process.
The updated agreement also includes key provisions governing the auto industry that will encourage more U.S. car production while protecting Canadian and Mexican companies from Trump’s threats of wider U.S. tariffs.
The updated agreement is subject to approval by Congress.
Trump on Monday morning called it a “great deal,” tweeting that it “solves the many deficiencies and mistakes in NAFTA, greatly opens markets to our Farmers and Manufacturers, reduces Trade Barriers to the U.S. and will bring all three Great Nations together in competition with the rest of the world.”
He added: “Congratulations to Mexico and Canada!”
The sweeping agreement includes hundreds of pages, covering thousands of individual products. While the updated provisions will have an impact on the specific companies or industries covered, the updated agreement is expected to have little overall economic impact.
“My expectation all along was that there would be few major changes and NAFTA would go from being one of the worst deals ever to the one of the best,” said Jim O’Sullivan, an economist with High Frequency Economics.
One of the biggest changes to the deal involves the name: Trump insisted the three countries use the name United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, replacing NAFTA.
“It’s a good day for Canada,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters after a late-night cabinet meeting to discuss the deal.
In a joint statement, Canada and the United States said it would “result in freer markets, fairer trade and robust economic growth in our region”.
The global financial markets also like the deal, largely because it removed the prospect of an all-out trade war between the U.S. and two of its biggest trading partners.
“The bigger issue is the positive impact on confidence and sentiment,” O’Sullivan said.
During the 2016, Trump promised to rewrite NAFTA or leave the trade deal altogether.
Canada was initially left out of the deal when the U.S. and Mexico reached an agreement last month to revamp the NAFTA. On Aug. 31, the Trump administration officially notified Congress of the deal with Mexico. That created a 90-day deadline that would allow outgoing Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to sign the updated agreement before he leaves office Dec. 1.
The most important provisions, in dollar terms, cover the auto industry, which has come to rely on a complex cross-border supply chain that moves billions of dollars’ worth of parts and components to factories located in all three countries. Trump’s threats to revoke NAFTA entirely could have added substantial costs to that supply chain, raised showroom car prices or left some models unprofitable to manufacture.
While the USMCA avoids tariffs, it will make it harder for global auto makers to build cars cheaply in Mexico and is aimed at bringing more jobs into the United States.
In August, Mexico agreed to provisions that would require that 40 percent to 45 percent of a car’s parts and assemblies be built in countries where auto workers earn at least $16 an hour in order for a car makers to qualify for NAFTA’s duty-free benefits.
In a concession to Mexican and Canadian companies, the final agreement hammered out Sunday largely exempts passenger vehicles, pickup trucks and auto parts from possible Trump administration tariffs.
If Trump imposes so-called “Section 232” autos tariffs on national security grounds, Mexico and Canada would each get a tariff-free annual quota of 2.6 million passenger cars for export to the United States. That’s well above their current export levels.
Pickup trucks built in both countries will be exempted entirely. If the U.S. does impose tariffs, Mexico will also get an auto parts quota of $108 billion a year, while Canada will get a parts quota of $32.4 billion annually.
The deal sets a five-year transition period after the agreement enters into force for the regional value content requirement for autos to increase to 75 percent, from the current 62.5 percent. The pact also requires that vehicle manufacturers source at least 70 percent of their steel and aluminum from within the three countries.
Trump’s biggest talking point – better access to Canadian markets for U.S. American dairy farmers – will likely to have the least impact, in dollar terms.
Canada reportedly agreed to provide give those U.S. dairy farmers access to about 3.5 percent of its roughly $16 billion annual domestic dairy market. Under the deal, the Canadian government will be allowed to compensate dairy farmers hurt by the deal.
Canada had agreed to open up wider access to dairy markets under the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Trump withdrew from in January, 2017. Trump administration officials say the new USMCA widens U.S. access to Canada’s dairy market beyond TPP levels.
For its part, Canada won a key concession form the U.S., which agreed to preserve a trade dispute process that Ottawa pushed hard to maintain. Canada relies on the settlement process to protect its lumber producers from anti-dumping tariffs imposed by the U.S.
The new agreement does limit the settlement process involving investor disputes to sectors that are dominated by state run firms, including energy, telecom and infrastructure companies.
-Reuters contributed to this report.
