Ross: Trump to Launch Notification of NAFTA Talks Within Weeks

Congress could be notified within two weeks of Trump administration plans to launch formal renegotiation talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said today.Ross said the administration will follow the notification process laid out under Trade Promotion Authority, also known as fast-track authority, approved by Congress in 2015. The letter to Congress will give the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees 90-day notice that the administration plans to begin NAFTA talks, the objectives of those talks and whether the talks are for a new trade agreement or revamping of the current 23-year-old trade pact with Canada and Mexico.“Under U.S. law there’s a very specific set of processes that is required to get through the Trade Promotion Act, the so-called fast-track for negotiations,'' said Ross at a joint press conference with Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal, Mexico's economic minister. "We are now in the very early stages of that. The next stage will be, hopefully, sometime in the next couple of weeks we’ll be issuing the 90-day letter and that’s what triggers the beginning of the formal process itself. We don’t have a date certain for that,” Ross said.The administration has been informally consulting with the two committees, the key trade panels that would be responsible for moving a final agreement through Congress. Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said earlier this week discussions with Trump officials were progressing and that he expected the White House to trigger the 90-day notification soon.Mexico will be ready to start for formal negotiations by the end of May, Guajardo said. He said Mexican and U.S. officials have been exploring areas for negotiations. “We will be waiting for the US and Canada as they go through their own legislative process to kick off negotiations,” Guajardo said. Mexico would prefer that the U.S. approach NAFTA renegotiations as a three-country trade pact rather than America striking separate deals with Mexico and Canada, he added. “NAFTA is a trilateral agreement. It would make a lot of sense to have trilateral discussions. On the larger agenda beyond trade, there are some bilateral issues like security, borders,” Guajardo said.Ross said the administration “is less concerned at this stage with the exact form than we are with trying to get to the substance.”