Mexico Archive

“It’s not NAFTA redone. It’s a brand new deal,” U.S. President Donald Trump declared triumphantly at the White House last week, announcing the revised free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. Don’t tell Trump, but his brand new deal is really just the Trans-Pacific Partnership with a few tweaks, and many fewer countries than the 12 that signed on before Trump withdrew. American negotiators won concessions in a few areas that were important to them, and made concessions in a few that were important to Mexico and Canada. But the new NAFTA, which Trump clumsily renamed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, […]

Deadlines can be useful in negotiations since they often force sides to act. If there is a difference in the intensity of interest in reaching an agreement, however, leverage shifts to the party less desperate to get a deal. That is evident in the now-successful effort to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. Canada clearly wanted to remain part of the deal. But up to the end, Canadian negotiators behaved as though the deadline was not as hard as their American counterparts insisted. President Donald Trump seemed to badly want an agreement that he could tout as a win […]