All eyes now shift to Canada as the United States and Mexico announced an agreement on some of the issues that had been hindering the year-long renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Experts and analysts shared their reactions to what transpired Monday and what might come next with BNN Bloomberg.
The head of Canada’s largest auto union saw the bilateral trade deal as a "positive" with Mexico ceding ground on labour standards:
“There is no question that Mexico will lose some of the jobs that they have managed to take over the years. So, I think this is a positive development for Canada. It’s just a good start. We need to deal with the overall labour issues in Mexico. We need to deal with the whole issue of free collective bargaining, but by and large, Mexico surrendered a fair bit in this last round.”
- Unifor President Jerry Dias
A member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s NAFTA advisory council said that the time has come for Canada to consider what it can give up to get a deal done:
“The United States also gave in this negotiation and that is a good sign for Canada. It’s a good sign for all of us to know that the United States is willing to give… Mexico has given, the U.S. has given and now it’s time for Canada to come to the table and for Canada to give something, too. So, I think the door is wide open now for us to come to the table and offer something that will hopefully make this deal come to a conclusion in the next couple weeks.”
- Rona Ambrose, member, NAFTA Advisory Council and , Global Fellow, Wilson Center Canada Institute
A food policy professor said that some tweaks can be made to supply management-related tariffs if Canada wants to get a deal done quickly with its North American partners:
“I never actually heard [the] Americans say that they want supply management to be abolished straight out, they just want more market access. Of course, as part of supply management, there are these very high tariffs on imports and I think that’s what we would want to do: To commit to a schedule [of] 15-to-20 years to see these tariffs go down significantly, probably… What we need to do now – or we’re probably 10 years late, really – is to look at the in-between. [What] would ‘supply management 2.0’ look like?”
- Sylvain Charlebois, Professor in Food Distribution and Policy, Dalhousie University
One of Canada’s most outspoken former politicians cautioned that the Trudeau government can’t let its ideals come before its trade priorities in trying to reach a deal:
“Let’s not be tempted, however the federal government might be, about the politics of that sort of virtue-signaling that we’ve seen in other areas… Let’s get a deal.”
- Brad Wall, former Saskatchewan premier
The head of a prominent Canadian poll researcher said the pressure now shifts back to Canada to seal the deal:
“I think this is a bit of a turning point… Let’s see what is left now in the Canadian arsenal. I wouldn’t discount that there are still things that Canada can do and leverage, but again, at least today – in the early hours of this announcement – it certainly looks like the pressure is back on this side of the border.”
- Shachi Kurl, executive director, Angus Reid Institute
A currency strategist said that the U.S. and Mexico were able to come to an agreement in spite of President Donald Trump’s tactics, not because of them:
"The thing to take out of the developments we’ve seen over the last 24 hours, it’s really to suggest that Trump is really sitting at the kids’ table. I really think that what’s going on here is the adults in the room are having a very disciplined trade negotiation. First the Mexicans and the Americans got together and addressed some major issues. Now they’re going to bring in Canada. They’re going to knock off the remaining set of issues, and they’re going to do all of that, sort of irrespective of what Trump actually wants."
- Karl Schamotta, Director of FX Research, Cambridge Global Payments
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