NAFTA Trade Talks Move to Mexico Amidst Combative National Mood Alex Panetta - The Canadian Press
go to original September 1, 2017

Mexico workers' rights top agenda of NAFTA talks (Al Jazeera)

Update: Sharp Differences Over Labor Surface at NAFTA Talks in Mexico (Reuters)

A second round of NAFTA negotiations gets underway today in a country that has long served as Donald Trump’s political whipping boy. Increasingly, there are indications Mexico is willing to whip back.

After quietly, calmly working with Trump, the centrist governing party has declared a red line: if the president starts to withdraw from NAFTA as he’s threatening, the Enrique Pena Nieto government says it’s leaving the negotiating table.

Its domestic critics want more.

Trump’s unpopularity in Mexico practically defies the laws of political science. A Pew survey puts his support here just north of the margin of error for zero, with a mere five per cent of Mexicans expressing confidence in the U.S. president.

With an election looming next year, lots of politicians are pining to counter-punch. That includes a famous left-wing lawmaker touted as a possible recruit for the new party that’s leading presidential polls.

There’s a picture of revolutionary fighter Emiliano Zapata hanging on Dolores Padierna’s office wall. She lauds him as the hero of a generations-long, unfinished battle for labour rights and higher wages, which haven’t risen under NAFTA.

The Senate leader of the old left-wing party, the PRD, would respond to Trump’s threats to pull out of NAFTA by pulling out first.

“It’s an embarrassment,” Padierna said in an interview in Spanish.

“When Donald Trump and (U.S. trade czar) Robert Lighthizer — or however you pronounce his name — mistreat, offend our country, we have a government that is very docile, that does not know how to defend the dignity and sovereignty of Mexico.”

Padierna wants to see a NAFTA with stronger labour standards, unionization rights and worker mobility. But barring that, she says, she’d rather see Mexico plan for a future with new trading partners to take up some U.S. slack.

Read the rest at MaClean's

Related: Mexico Girds for Possibility of World Without NAFTA (Associated Press)

Related: As NAFTA Talks Resume, Mexicans Say Trump Is Wrong to Focus on the Deficit (The Washington Post)

Related: Leftist Presidential Hopeful AMLO Calls for NAFTA Talks to Be Suspended (WSJ.com)

Related: This Is Why Trump Has the Leverage Over Mexico and Canada on NAFTA (McClatchy)

Related: How Donald Trump’s Nafta Threats Are Bringing Mexico and China Together (LiveMint)

Related: Trump on NAFTA Is 'Ridiculous', Let's Look for Trade Deals Elsewhere: Canada (The Canadian Press)

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