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Flake: ‘We’re close’ to resolving seasonal produce concerns, lifting hold on Doud

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) on Tuesday said he was close to resolving a spat with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative over a U.S. seasonal produce proposal in the NAFTA talks that led him to place a hold on the nominee for USTR’s chief agricultural negotiator position, Gregg Doud. “We’re close,” Flake told Inside U.S. Trade. “We’re getting some commitments, some meetings with [USTR Robert] Lighthizer and some of the interested stakeholders. And this as well as a letter...

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Lighthizer responds to Sen. Flake regarding NAFTA seasonal produce


Trump gets a pro-NAFTA letter from GOP senators just ahead of the State of the Union

As expected, a group of Republican senators – including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) – has appealed to the president ahead of the State of the Union address to keep NAFTA “in place.” As Inside U.S. Trade reported last week, the Jan. 30 letter was timed to precede President Trump's speech . “We write today to reaffirm the benefits of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and congratulate you on efforts to modernize the agreement and put America...

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In letter to Trump, 35 Republican senators call for improved market access, energy and e-commerce provisions in a new NAFTA


Dèjá vu? Trump's Davos swing restores TPP, TTIP to the conversation

President Trump’s trade message at last week’s World Economic Forum largely hewed to previous commitments to shake up the trade world (“we are working to reform the international trading system,” he told world leaders ), but his visit to Davos, Switzerland, and its aftermath also added some new wrinkles to the emerging trade equation. One was his seeming willingness to reopen the potential for joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the negotiations for which it abruptly exited a year ago, fulfilling an...

Lighthizer by the numbers: Why U.S., Canadian deficit figures differ

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and his Canadian counterpart in the NAFTA talks, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, each took to the podium in Montreal yesterday wielding deficit numbers in support of their arguments about what to do with the agreement. And both, pointedly, cited the other side's figures during an end-of-round trilateral press event . Lighthizer used those numbers to refute what he called “some misunderstanding here that the United States is somehow being unfair in these negotiations.” Using Canadian...

Citing U.S. trade actions, Malmström balks at Ross comments on TTIP resumption

European Union Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström last week responded to U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’ optimism about resuming U.S.-EU trade talks by listing actions the U.S. has taken over the past year that she said would make it difficult to start again. Ross, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 24, said it was no accident that the U.S. withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership but not the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations with the EU...

Lighthizer: Senators must confirm USTR deputies if they want faster negotiations

MONTREAL -- If senators want the North American Free Trade Agreement to be renegotiated faster and talks on other deals initiated they should confirm U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer’s deputies, the Trump administration's top trade negotiator said on Monday. “I get senators saying 'Why are you moving so slowly?'” Lighthizer said at the close of the sixth round of talks here. “And I say to myself, 'We've had 230 days since we nominated the first deputy, and I've had none...

USTR: Canada’s WTO challenge highlights dangers of binding NAFTA dispute settlement

MONTREAL -- Canada’s sweeping World Trade Organization challenge of how the U.S. administers trade remedies has reinforced U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer’s position that binding dispute settlement is dangerous and should be kept out of a retooled North American Free Trade Agreement, he said here on Monday. Lighthizer also knocked Canada’s new ideas on auto rules of origin and expounded on what he viewed as flawed statistics used by Canada to measure the trade balance between itself and the U.S.,...

In his own words: Lighthizer on Canada's auto rule-of-origin ideas

MONTREAL – “First of all there’s an enormous vagueness about it,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on Monday after being asked about new Canadian auto rule-of-origin ideas discussed during the just-ended sixth round of NAFTA talks. What followed in the USTR's post-round briefing with reporters was a lengthy explanation for why Lighthizer rejected the Canadian approach in a ministerial statement earlier in the day, saying it might “lead to less regional content than we have now, fewer jobs in...

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