USTR Lighthizer Hopes for Pre-Election NAFTA Vote

The NAFTA 2.0 negotiations need to be completed in the next week or two to be able to facilitate a vote in Congress before the November US elections, according to US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer."We're going to meet again on Monday [May 7], and we'll see if we can get a good agreement. I'd like to get it done a week or two after that. If not, then you start having a problem,” Lighthizer said at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event in Washington. If not, then it will be "thin ice" to get a vote in Congress before the mid-term elections."It's my ambition that this not be a Republican vote in the Congress," he said. "I think it's got to be a bipartisan vote. We want to have a big vote." He added that hopefully there would be 65 to 70 votes for the plan in the U.S. Senate.