Foreign Ministers of Mexico and Canada Say NAFTA Should Be Re-Negotiated Trilaterally Gerrit De Vynck - Bloomberg
go to original February 22, 2017

The foreign ministers of Mexico and Canada presented a unified front ahead of potential trade talks with Donald Trump’s administration, stressing the North American Free Trade Agreement has benefited all three countries.

Mexico’s Luis Videgaray and Canada’s Chrystia Freeland said Nafta should be re-negotiated with all three nations seated at the table, rather than in bilateral discussions.

“We very much recognize that Nafta is a three-country agreement,” Freeland said Tuesday at a panel discussion with Videgaray in Toronto ahead of private trade talks. “We really value our relationship with Mexico.”

Their talks come after Trump said trade with Canada only needed a “tweak” as opposed to a more thorough re-set with Mexico, a comment he made after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s visit to the White House last week. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto canceled a January meeting with the U.S. president after he tweeted that Nieto shouldn’t come unless Mexico was prepared to pay for a border wall to stop undocumented immigration.

Mexico’s relationship with the U.S. goes deeper than Trump’s “damaging” rhetoric, Videgaray said. He has been to meetings in Washington twice since the president’s inauguration and said he was confident the two nations’ issues could be resolved. “We will work it out in a way that is constructive and positive for both countries,” the foreign minister said.

Earlier Tuesday, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said he expected Nafta negotiations to start in the summer and that Mexico wouldn’t initiate talk about tariffs, calling any discussion of new import taxes a “Pandora’s box.”

Read the rest at Bloomberg

Related: Canada Isn't About to Throw Mexico Under the Bus, Foreign Ministers Say (CBC News)

Related: Mexico Says New Tariffs in NAFTA Talks Would Be Disastrous (Chosun.com)

Related: NAFTA Exit May Lead to Anti-American Populist President in Mexico (Philippine News Agency)

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