With Congressional deadline looming, Freeland pushes back against calls for swift NAFTA deal

September 20, 2018

With a U.S. Congressional deadline looming, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters in Washington today that the only NAFTA timeline she's working to is the one that will end up delivering the deal Canada wants.

"The only target we are aiming for is getting a good deal for Canada," she said after meeting with her counterpart, United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

"Our officials now have some more work to do, and will continue working this evening, and then Ambassador Lighthizer and I agreed to meet again tomorrow."

Asked why the negotiations on a revamped NAFTA were taking so long, Freeland insisted that negotiators were taking the time they need to hammer out a fair deal.

"For an agreement of this scale, 13 months for a very deep modernization of the kind we're working on is absolutely normal," she said. "Trade agreements do take some time both to negotiate and to update because the economy is complicated and trade agreements are complicated."..

This was excerpted from the 19 September 2018 edition of CBC News.


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