FTA Central

Key trade advocates on Capitol Hill are viewing the amended U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement as a positive pivot to the Asia-Pacific region, while industry groups question how the pact's revised changes would be implemented in meaningful ways.

Mexico's ruling party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, last week pitched a proposal that would implement the country's constitutional labor reforms passed last year in a way that labor advocates believe would undermine labor rules that will potentially be included in a retooled North American Free Trade Agreement.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has pitched to his NAFTA counterparts a new automotive rule of origin methodology that would count wages equivalent to $15 an hour towards the regional value content of a car, sources close to the talks told Inside U.S. Trade.

President Trump on Friday said the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement is “very close to being finished,” adding Korea's exclusion from the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs lends leverage to trade talks in general.

“Japan is clear; what the next tier [is], we have to come to grips with that.”

China: “No one will emerge a winner from a trade war.”

“We shouldn’t make up a national security clause as a way to try to do something when there’s specific bad action by China that we can resolve through mechanisms that already exist in a rule-of-law order.”

The U.S. and South Korea will hold a third round of talks to discuss the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement on Thursday in Washington, DC, the Korean Trade Ministry announced on March 13, and sources say the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum will play a prominent role in the discussions.