President Donald Trump announced that a new trade agreement with Mexico has finally been reached Monday morning, after a long period of negotiation. In a phone call with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, President Trump said that new agreement is “a really good deal for both countries.”
President Trump noted that the new deal would not reuse the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) name, “we’re going to call it the United States-Mexico trade agreement. We’re going to get rid of NAFTA because it has a bad connotation.” President Nieto said that reworking NAFTA has been “an interest we have had for quite a few months now. To review it, to modernize it, to update it.”
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue stated support of the new trade agreement between the U.S. and Mexico. “This is nothing short of a great victory for farmers and ranchers because locking in our access to Mexican markets is critical to supporting farm income and strengthening rural communities. Mexico has historically been a great customer and partner, and we are happy to have this resolved for our agricultural producers,” the statement read.
Canada was also a topic of discussion during the phone call, with President Nieto expressing a desire to see Canada be incorporated into the agreement. As of Monday, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland will be departing her diplomatic trip to Europe to travel to Washington for trade talks with the U.S. President Trump said, “If they’d like to negotiate fairly, we’ll do that…We could have a separate deal [with Canada], or we could put it into this deal.” Very few details of the United States-Mexico trade agreement will be made public ahead of the negotiations with Canada.
U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer and others closely involved with the negotiations were thanked by President Trump for working diligently towards reaching an agreement with Mexico. Lighthizer is hopeful that the negotiations with Canada will be completed by Friday to meet the timeline required by Congress.
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