Trump Trade Negotiator Warns That Canada Is Running Out of Time

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s top trade official warned Tuesday that Canada was running out of time to join the United States and Mexico in a new North American Free Trade Agreement, lamenting that the Canadians have proved unwilling to make “essential” concessions in significant areas of disagreement.

Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative, made the rare public comments about the state of the negotiations at an event in New York and insisted that the Trump administration will move forward with a bilateral trade pact with Mexico by Sept. 30 if an agreement cannot be reached with Canada. Such a move would anger the business world and face an uncertain path in Congress, which must ratify a final trade agreement.

“I think Canada wants to do it, I know we want to do it,” Lighthizer said the Concordia annual summit. “We’ll see whether it happens. We’re sort of running out of time.”

In separate remarks Tuesday, Canada’s leaders demonstrated little urgency to close a deal this week.

Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, said that it was important that the United States and Canada find a win-win agreement.

“We know that Canada’s interests are what we have to stand up for and we will,” said Trudeau, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “We are looking for the right deal.”

Trudeau noted that the United States and Mexico have come to terms on their outstanding trade issues, but suggested that would have little influence on his talks with the United States.

“There’s a possibility there to build on what they agreed,” he added.

Lighthizer and his Canadian counterpart, Chrystia Freeland, the foreign minister, agreed not to publicly share the details of their negotiations. However, Lighthizer acknowledged that protectionist barriers to Canada’s dairy industry and a disagreement over a mechanism for settling trade disputes between the two countries remain sticking points.

“The fact is that Canada is not making concessions in areas that we think are essential,” Lighthizer said.

Political considerations in all three countries are playing a role in the timeline to complete a revised NAFTA.

Mexico’s president-elect, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, takes office on Dec. 1, and its current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, wants to sign the new NAFTA agreement as a final act before he departs. Lighthizer said that the fate of the agreement under the next Mexican administration is uncertain and that he does not want to have to restart talks with Mexico’s new leadership.

Canada’s internal politics are also a factor given provincial elections on Oct. 1. The Canadian government may be reluctant to finalize any agreement that contains dairy concessions before a vote in Quebec, whose economy is heavily dependent on dairy, trade analysts said.

The Trump administration wants the current, Republican-controlled Congress to ratify a new deal by Dec. 1. Since Trump notified Congress of the administration’s deal with Mexico last month, the administration now has until Sept. 30 to release text of a new trade agreement.

Some on Capitol Hill say there may be some wiggle room on the end-of-September deadline. Congress could take several routes to allow the administration to submit a final agreement in October or later, but still allow Trump to sign the deal in November. Several congressional staff members stressed in interviews this month that the deadline is only binding if Congress chooses to enforce it — and that it may choose not to.

Under U.S. trade law, the final text of the trade agreement must be public for 60 days before it is signed. Even if that happens before the next Mexican administration takes office, there likely will still be additional obstacles in Congress, which has the final say on trade treaties. A vote is unlikely to occur until next year and this could be complicated if Democrats take control of the House or the Senate.

Freeland, who has been engaged in marathon talks with Lighthizer in Washington in recent weeks, demurred Tuesday when asked about the specifics of the differences between the two countries. She emphasized her hope of reaching an agreement and underscored that doing so is also important to the United States because Canada is its largest market.

Despite Lighthizer’s threat to move ahead with just Mexico, he did not suggest breaking off trade relations with Canada if it fails to meet this month’s deadline. He said that the United States and Canada would continue trade talks and try to come up with a separate deal as soon as possible.

The one promise that Lighthizer would make was that Trump would not let the new deal be called “NAFTA” — an agreement which he has derided for years as a failure.

“The president is not going to call it NAFTA,” he said. “We’ll call it something else.”

Trump said earlier this month that he would like to call the revised deal the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement, or USMC.