NAFTA 2.0 is coming out this week and there’s still a lot of unanswered questions.
The U.S. is expected to publish the full text of the new trade pact–set to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement–on Friday. Instead of a trilateral accord, however, the revised trade deal consists of a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Mexico–but it will leave open the possibility for Canada to join at a later date, according to sources who spoke to Bloomberg .
The Trump administration put a clock on NAFTA’s modernization process so that the new trade deal between the three countries could be signed by outgoing Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto before he leaves office on December 1. Despite a stalemate in negotiations with Canada, the Trump administration is pushing forward with a U.S.-Mexico only deal–because "if we push it beyond that date then we have a new negotiation with [incoming Mexican President Andrés Manuel] Lopez Obrador and we don’t know where that would go at all," U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Tuesday at the Concordia annual summit in New York.
Ahead of the full document release, the details are sparse. Even so, here is a recap of what is known to be in, what’s been left out, and the open questions you might have when comparing the new NAFTA agreement with the 24-year-old existing treaty.
A 16-year sunset clause: As opposed to current NAFTA, the new agreement does not expect to remain unchanged in perpetuity–it is valid for 16 years at […]
This story is part of our ‘News from Around the Web’ publication, continue reading the story here: A New NAFTA Is Coming. Here’s What You Need to Know
