Upon the conclusion of the fifth round of renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer issued the following statement:
“While we have made progress on some of our efforts to modernize NAFTA, I remain concerned about the lack of headway. Thus far, we have seen no evidence that Canada or Mexico are willing to seriously engage on provisions that will lead to a rebalanced agreement. Absent rebalancing, we will not reach a satisfactory result. A rebalanced, updated NAFTA will promote greater prosperity for American workers, farmers, ranchers and businesses and strengthen the North American region as a whole. Our teams will be meeting again next month in Washington. I hope our partners will come to the table in a serious way so we can see meaningful progress before the end of the year.”
The parties have agreed to hold the sixth round of negotiations January 23-28, 2018 in Montréal, Canada. In the meantime, negotiators will continue to work in intersessional meetings in Washington, D.C. throughout mid-December and will report back to the chief negotiators on the progress achieved.