The United States and Canada reached a deal to update NAFTA and keep it a trilateral pact with Mexico, beating a midnight deadline with agreements to boost U.S. access to Canada’s dairy market and protect Canada from possible U.S. autos tariffs, two Canadian sources with direct knowledge of the talks said on Sunday.
Trade negotiators for the US and Canada in the last hours were putting the finishing touches on a deal to reshape the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA, Sunday evening.
The agreement, came just hours before a deadline set by the Trump administration, will pave the way for a vote in Congress to approve the deal after more than a year of negotiations among the US, Canada, and Mexico over the trilateral agreement.
Negotiators for the US and Canada were able to overcome major sticking points between the two countries, including Canada’s protection of its dairy market and a system for settling trade disputes. The dairy issue was a longtime target for Trump, who insisted that the high protective barriers for US dairy farmers trying to export to Canada were unfair.
The agreement would seal the largest trade-deal rewrite of President Donald Trump’s tenure.
On the other hand, Canada wanted to maintain Chapter 19, a key element of NAFTA that allowed countries to bring a grievance against another NAFTA member regarding unfair trade practices or tariffs. The procedure was essentially a fast-track version of the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlements but only applied to the three NAFTA members.
