NAFTA Renegotiation

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May 28, 2019

Starts: 12:00 PM (EDT)
Ends: 1:00 PM (EDT)

Under the new USMCA investment chapter, a radical change has occurred that will not only impact US investors in Canada and Mexico, but may herald a significant retreat in the US position on investment protection. Our presenters will describe these changes and address

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On Monday April 29th, 2019, Mexico’s Senate approved a bill that gives its workers the right to use secret-ballots to vote on union matters and contracts. It also requires proof of workers’ consent for collective bargaining agreements and creates an independent agency and court to replace the current labor board in order to…

On December 1, a day after signing the new U.S.-Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), President Trump suggested to the press that he would formally notify Canada and Mexico of U.S. withdrawal from the existing NAFTA, in order to pressure Congress to pass USMCA in 2019.

Meanwhile, on December 6, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer met with…

After more than a year of negotiation, the United States, Mexico and Canada reached an agreement to update the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which governed trade among the three nations. The new agreement may not go into effect until 2020 because leaders from the three countries must sign it and then Congress…

On August 31, after a week of talks, Canada and the United States failed to reach agreement on a new NAFTA that aligns with the bilateral U.S.-Mexico agreement reached on August 27. Among the key outstanding issues is the U.S. objective of opening up Canada’s dairy market and the Canadian objective of maintaining Chapter 19…

On August 27, the U.S. and Mexico announced a “preliminary agreement in principle” on the renegotiation of NAFTA—a deal reached without Canada, which sat out the latest bilateral talks. Canada’s Foreign Minister, Chrystia Freeland, has joined negotiations this week in hopes of reaching a trilateral agreement by Friday, August 31. Despite the significant publicity around…

NAFTA negotiators at the working level met intersessionally from December 9-15 in Washington D.C., conducting technical discussions on digital trade, financial services, customs, energy, state-owned enterprises, and textiles, among other chapters.

No chapters were closed during the latest meeting. Negotiators also mostly avoided addressing in detail the most controversial proposals tabled by the United States

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The fifth round of NAFTA renegotiation, held for the first time without participation by the NAFTA trade ministers, took place in Mexico City from November 17-21. The negotiators made progress at the technical level on some NAFTA chapters, including on digital trade, sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS), customs, and regulatory cooperation.

Little progress was made…

The fourth round of NAFTA re-negotiation, which took place October 11-17, confirmed that Canada, Mexico and the United States remain far apart on several major issues, and forced the three countries to postpone the hoped-for timeframe for reaching a final agreement to the end of the first quarter of 2018.

Following the round, U.S. Trade…

Following the third negotiating round for NAFTA modernization, held in Ottawa September 23-27, the U.S., Canada, and Mexico issued a joint statement asserting “significant progress” in several areas such as competition, state-owned enterprises, digital trade, competition policy, and telecommunications, as well as the substantive completion of a chapter on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Still,…