Canada

Technology organizations and analysts say the digital trade chapter of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement is unlikely to require many legal changes, contending it is designed to handle future barriers to digital trade instead.

“Our industries want to support this new agreement when it faces Congressional review, but that depends heavily on having an overall package that benefits, rather than harms, our long-term ability to survive in a global economy.”

National Foreign Trade Council President Rufus Yerxa said Thursday that the business community supports the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and indicated the group would begin its lobbying efforts on behalf of the deal soon.

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement could give U.S. poultry and egg producers less access to the Canadian market than Ottawa offered in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and in one case less than what the industry enjoys under NAFTA, Inside U.S. Trade has learned.

Key advisory committees to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative have revised their comments on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement following Canada's last-minute addition to the deal, praising the trilateral conclusion but singling out additional provisions they think warrant more consideration.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce contends that while the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement is an improvement over the original NAFTA in some areas, several of its provisions should not be “viewed as precedents” for future trade deals.

U.S. and Mexican officials are eyeing late next week or the week after for the start of formal negotiations aimed at arriving at a Section 232 resolution that is palatable for both countries, sources tell Inside U.S. Trade.

“We need to form a sort of set of core proposals that seem to be broad enough to attract discussion and generate more critical mass in order for us to continue.”