美国国家公共电台 NPR Trump's NAFTA Makeover Not So Extreme

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Starting tomorrow, the U.S., Canada and Mexico will begin renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. And despite very tough talk about NAFTA during the campaign, it appears the Trump 1 administration is backing away from a major assault on the decades-old trade deal. NPR's Chris Arnold reports.

CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE 2: During the campaign, Donald Trump clearly tapped into frustration 3 about workers who had lost jobs in manufacturing. And one of the central villains 4 responsible for stealing those American jobs was NAFTA.

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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: NAFTA was the worst deal ever made in the history of the world. It was a one-way highway out of the United States.

ARNOLD: Upon taking office, President Trump followed through on his pledge to scuttle 5 another trade deal - the Trans-Pacific Partnership 6, or TPP. But by April of this year, it was becoming clear that NAFTA would be different.

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TRUMP: Well, I was going to terminate NAFTA as of two or three days from now. The president of Mexico, who I have a very, very good relationship, called me. And also the prime minister of Canada, who I have a very good relationship - and I like both of these gentlemen very much - they called me. And they said, rather than terminating NAFTA, could you please renegotiate?

ARNOLD: There are also a lot of U.S. manufacturing and agricultural companies, and businesses of all kinds, really, who do not want the president to throw out NAFTA. Analysts 7 say most U.S. industries support NAFTA because the deal has actually increased U.S. exports to Canada and Mexico. And it appears that the administration is hearing that message.

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TRUMP: I decided 8 rather than terminating NAFTA, which would be a pretty big, you know, shock to the system, we will renegotiate.

ARNOLD: OK, so if we're not throwing out NAFTA, what's on the table as far as changes to it?

JAIME REUSCHE: We see the changes as departing from a lot of the rhetoric 9 that we saw during the campaign, where now we see them as relatively 10 modest.

ARNOLD: Jaime Reusche is a vice 11 president with Moody's who follows Mexico. He says that the U.S. is looking to get tougher enforcement of environmental and labor 12 regulations in Mexico. There will also be an effort to update NAFTA with regard to all the information-age technologies, products and issues that didn't exist when NAFTA was created.

Also on the to-do list - it changes to the dispute resolution process between the three countries. But as far as making really big changes to NAFTA, Jaime Reusche says to understand how hard that would be to actually do, just look at that little switch on your car door that makes your window go up and down. He says those switches...

REUSCHE: They start off as small components 13 in Asia, which are then imported and brought over to the U.S. to Colorado. In Colorado, they make these components into a capacitor. The capacitor then goes over to Mexico.

ARNOLD: And he says the components cross back into the U.S. or Canada, back to the U.S. or Mexico again, before finally being part of a finished car. So multiply that by thousands of different products across a slew 14 of industries. The root system that's been laid down is just an immensely complex web of interconnected business relationships across both borders.

REUSCHE: Perhaps it's a parallel to the health care issue, where they realize, to actually be able to make significant changes that don't hurt anybody, it becomes very challenging to actually change.

ARNOLD: Of course, regardless of what the administration's trade officials have said they want to do so far, you don't have to stretch your imagination too much to think that the president might make news with a tweet or a statement that catches the negotiators on all sides off guard. Caroline Freund is with the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

CAROLINE FREUND: Well, I guess the thing about a wild card is it can go in either direction. So on the one hand, if Trump insisted that Mexico pay for the wall as part of the NAFTA negotiations 15, that would derail the negotiations completely.

ARNOLD: But she says, on the other hand, the president might be able to nudge negotiators in a useful direction, too. Chris Arnold, NPR News.

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