CBC News: US Opens NAFTA Talks With Focus on Trade Balance and Deficit of Facts

In opening talks with representatives from Canada and Mexico to renegotiate the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, the US representative argued for a complete overhaul of the 23-year-old trade deal. “NAFTA has fundamentally failed many, many Americans,” insists Robert Lighthizer in an article by Chris Hall for CBC News. The United States has trade deficits with Canada and Mexico, but overall, NAFTA has contributed economic growth and jobs for all three countries and reduced prices. Technological advances are responsible for more US job losses than trade, and the US job outlook might have been even worse during the 2008 global debt crisis without such trade agreements. “Canada does not view trade surpluses or deficits as a primary measure of whether a trading relationship works,” noted Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland. Investopedia analysis of NAFTA pros and cons concludes, “NAFTA displays the classic free-trade quandary: diffuse benefits with concentrated costs.” – YaleGlobal