Yesterday, argentina qualified for the world cup. The last time they didnt was 1986. Were we heard some incredible information and context and history in the earlier panel going back to nearly 1980s and the whole history behind nafta. This panel is where the rubber meets the road. Its about farmers and businesses and workers and investors. And were really excited to give that perspective. I would like to introduce the panelists. Andrea van vugt, shes had a distinguished career in the private and public sector. She was the chief of staff to canadas minister of International Trade and the Foreign Affairs trade adviser to the Prime Minister from 2009 to 2014. A time when canada was engaged in both Canada EuropeFree Trade Agreements and the tpp negotiations among any others. A time of a lot of negotiations between canada and its trading partners. Ron bennett, the president of the Canadian Federation of agriculture, the lead association of canadas agriculture association. What where find interesting about canada is i went to the web page and they had issues. They had both International Trade and internal trade, which i found fascinating. If you go to any of our ag associations in the United States, youll only see International Trade. And then eugenio salinas, the director of Institutional Affairs for a mexican conglomerate headquartered in monterey, mexico, which does everything in mexican style from electrical cables and Power Transformers to processed meats and tasty snacks. Which actually go well with beer. And hes also currently the coordinator for mexicos private sector advisory room for the nafta renegotiation. Well talk a little bit about that process as well. Im a big fan of National Public radio and i would like to quote something from a telecast they once had. It said, quote, the two candidates seem to really hate nafta. They both seem to hate even more the idea that someone might get the impression that they dont hate nafta or that one of them hates nafta a bit less than the other. When these two say nafta, what are they talking about, end of quote. Anyone want to guess what year and who are the two candidates . 2008, and it was barack obama and hillary clinton. So that gives you some context. Anyone who follows the u. S. Elections and campaign in 20sky knows full well the rhetoric throughout the campaign, we touched on it earlier today. Trump announcing and tweeting and talking multiple times about nafta being the worst trade deal ever. The u. S. Priorities, if you really boil them down, theyre about trade deficits, jobs, and a lack of reciprocity or concern about reciprocity at the border. Those are the u. S. Priorities and concerns. Framing the starting of the negotiations. I would like to talk to andrea first about what do Canadian Business stakeholders see as their priorities in these negotiations . Sure, thanks, yohai, and where want to thank Scotty Greenwood and Gordon Gibson for including us in todays panel. So, through the president ial election, it became quite clear to us that nafta was going to be renegotiated. We embarked on a fairly intensive process with our membership, which includes 160 companies from across canada, representing every sector and every region of the country. And we got very common messages from our membership, regardless of what industry they were in or where they were in the country. And as i had conversations with my mexican and u. S. Counterparts, i have found from a business perspective, theyre very familiar. It included something, a general theme or a general principle, which originally in our letter to Prime Minister trudeau and secretary ross, do no harm. But some smart friends of mine indicated we should probably stop saying harm because it undermines the message that a lot of voters are trying to send to the administration about how you feel about nafta and the effects of nafta on the ground. From our perspective, what we talked about is dont roll back. Dont undermine the work we have done to integrate in each of our three countries that have made this region competitive. Dont undermine the progress we have made to date. The second section, which is modernize, which is something familiar to all of you, which is naftas old, out of date, and if nafta is old and out of date, then the kennedy u. S. Free trade agreement is prehistoric. You need to modernize. Im merging into rons message, but ecommerce, digital trade, i. P. , a whole host of chapters that can be modernized. You can use examples quickly by using what was negotiated in tpp. And then in particular, two specific areas on modernization, where we need to do something about Labor Mobility and temporary entry. The list of eligible professionals is way out of date. We need to do something about that. The other is customs processes. Border processes. Its ridiculous were still doing things in paper. We need to do something about that. The third area was go farther, and in our letter to the Prime Minister and the secretary, we suggested we need to intract regulatory cooperation and find a better way of doing regulatory cooperation to reduce costs across our border in making things together. And the final area was infrastructure and a way to try to get around some of the buy american provisions in the United States. So that both canada and the u. S. Have skin in the game. There were two areas ill quickly mention, are our two areas where we sent a message to the canadian government. One of them was on countryspecific rules of ori n origin. Thats on, as you can imagine, autos. Thats something we have heard a lot about today already. The other area was on resolution. Ill Say Something on chapter 19. My friend at the embassy in canada from the u. S. Say, you know, why are you so worried about chapter 19 . You have similar provisions in the wto. You got that protection. Why are you worried about it . From our perspective, that is not the same protection as the nafta provision. Were concerned, the Business Community is concerned that the u. S. Administrations agenda on chapter 19 stretches beyond nafta. And stretches to the wto and to other international agreements. We feel that its something that needs to be entrenched in bedrocks. Much of the conversation has focused so much on manufacturing jobs and had movement of plants and the impact that free trade, Free Trade Agreements, the border modernization, had on the sector, but one of the real successes of nafta has been in agriculture. Creating new marketss for u. S. Farmers and u. S. Exporters and canadians and mexicans as well. Historically, also one of the friction points of trade between the countries. Ron, i would like to give you an opportunity to hear your insights from the canadian agricultural perspective on kind of what the priorities are for the renegotiation. Yeah, it was interesting listening to the priorities from industry. A lot would be similar. I think one of the unfortunate things in the discussion, just to talk to the manufacturing issue and the loss of jobs. There are a number of factors that have nothing to do with trade agreements that deal with loss of jobs. I started working in a steel plant when they had 10,000 workers. Now they have 3,000 workers but twice as much. Thats all because of automation, robots, that type of thing. And i think mr. Gingrich in the Previous Panel talked about the fact that there is a need for education retraining, so theres a lot of issues that are behind the job loss thing. And unfortunately, we got caught in a discussion during the election that this was all because of trade, and it wasnt. More specifically, with agriculture, we have seen exponential growth in agriculture trade between all three countries. Canada, mexico, and the United States. I think canada now, we have about 56 billion in reciprocal trade between canada and the u. S. , and approaching 4 billion with mexico. And there is a lot of common interest. One of the things that we did as an organization, once it became clear that nafta would likely be something that would be discussed, is we reached out to our colleagues in the United States and in mexico, the American Farm bureau in the states here and mexico, cna, their major farm organization. We started the discussion about what the priorities should be. And again, it got to the point, and almost like youre saying, lets not roll this back, because we had this tremendous growth in the trade that has taken place. I had the opportunity to travel to a number of u. S. States as well to talk to farmers and form organizations there. I actually was in iowa the day in april when the president announced he was going to pull out of nafta. Well, immediately, everybody left the meeting to start calling their congressmen and the white house to try to get this hauled back. The price of corn fell 2 in a few hours. Theres a huge dependency. I think iowa now experts Something Like 70 of the corn they grow to mexico. That interdependence and those tradelines have developed over the last number of years. And its been beneficial to agriculture producers in all three countries. And i think one of the things that needs to be remembered is its not just about primary agriculture. Its about the Food Processing industry and the transportation sector as well, because quite often, i grew up with beef cattle. Some of them end up in the u. S. It will be processed and sold back to canada. Theres an interdependence that takes place. I know its the same with mexico. So one of the steps that we took heading into this is talked to, as i said, our other counterparts in mexico and the u. S. , and we talked about modernization of the agreement. How can we streamline some of the approval processes . How can we harmonize regulation . How can we take a look at border crossings and see if we can remove some of the barriers that hold up trucks passing back and forth . And even Something Like in the beef industry, process is inspected in a plant in canada shouldnt have to be reinspected going into the u. S. If its already passed inspection. We went as far as when the deal was announced, we held a press conference here in washington, and issued a joint statement that went to the negotiators and all three countries. And it talked about building on the process that had been made. One of the things that i should refer to, a mention was made by Stephen Harper in his presentation about supply management, and sometimes it becomes a discussion issue, but its a very small component of the overall discussion, and something that isnt realized is that there is trade allowed back and forth between some of the commodities, but its done as part of an agreement that Everybody Knows what is coming in and what is going out, in fact, i know canada has become the number two market for chicken producers in the u. S. , exporting into canada. I dont think thats recognized. I guess the key issues are those modernization issues. Regulation, harmonization, dealing with transportation issues to actually improve the flow of trade. And as far as some of the more hot button issues on access, we could get into a fight over supply, but we could also get into a fight over sugar access into the state. We have to watch that we dont derail the progress thats been made by some of the minor issues out there because there has been a huge success story. One of the other things and this likely goes across not only agriculture but industry and others, is how do we relay to the common voter that feels the trade agreement may have caused the job losses. How to relay to the voter what the benefits of these deals have been, because they seem disconnected from how these deals have actually maybe provided longterm jobs. And i think thats going to be the message were going to have to continue to push forward. Eugenio, before the republican nomination campaign, when you would talk to businesses in the United States and canada or frankly in mexico, their concerns were about global overcapacity, the china effect, the impact that that was having in all three countries. The nafta and the focus on mexico kind of supplanted what had been a general concern from the Business Community and the impact that has on its workers and farmers and supply chains and service providers, et cetera, and really zeroed in on job losses and nafta as kind of a surrogate for that because frankly, nafta has had a Bad Reputation in the u. S. For many of the reasons that were discussed in the earlier panel. Im curious from the mexican perspective, how you see the priorities for mexico and how the mexican Business Community is working to advance those priorities through these renegotiations. Thank you. Yohai, and thank you, ron and andrea, first, to be here with me in chairing this panel. And my friend whom i was invited, and my colleagues here from mexico. Precisely, i was just hearing a little bit of what my colleague said and what each of the countries have felt about it. If i were to tell you that before the nafta negotiation, 12 years ago, which i was able to be part of it, its been 25 years old, the pin, im proud i found it and im wearing it. Hopefully its a good luck charm for a successful renegotiation. I remember that private sector really getting together, organizing as we are right now. Ill explain a little bit what we have done, but in the sense that we were if i may use a word, in an opposite side of a table in putting a lot of arguments to keep mexico close to the world, a lot of Different Industries that have grown in mexico and have been successful just because of the protection. And then, a whole system in which we were by president Salinas Administration and all the cabinets, that the need for mexico was to embark in a Free Trade Agreement. And the Free Trade Agreement at the end and not precisely in the long term, but in the medium term, it will start becoming a good thing for mexico because we were going to grow in an institutional, legal system that we didnt have. That we were going to have the opportunity to start developing, as has been said a lot. All this production changed and in a certain way, trying to sell that when people were saying how come youre willing to go ahead and try to negotiate with that famous elephant, the ambassador would say, even with countries like canada. And it was a very interesting thing that in the end ended up becoming a so good deal in negotiation for mexico. Because we see it in a general way, which is not happening with other trade negotiations in mexico. Because we complement a lot. But that took us some time in the private sector to learn it and then agree. And have that the way we have been trying to support or to back up some of the proposals in the negotiating positions of the Mexican Government. 26 years later, its a very different story. All the mexican private sector is behind keeping at least after this, at least the amount of trade. And i will say, it was explained here a while ago, before there were losers and winners. And it was not easy. Mexico went into a very deep depression immediately after the nafta was signed 23 years ago, 24. And no matter, we knew if it had not been for nafta, we probably wouldnt have come back as strong and as fast as we did at that time. So now we have a very different private sector that is there trying to support the Mexican Government and trying to tell them, a, we really need you to at least keep what youre doing, and for that, we are here to support you and see what we can do, which we have forecast to do in some years, which was to lobby, to promote, and saying that sometimes we didnt show each and everybody of those people who were really benefitting because the guy in nebraska or in wyoming was getting a check for his trouble but didnt know that the products and the check was with money that the product from mexico gives him. We found out that just from indiana, we import 1. 6 billion of pistons of cars that go into mexico. For sure, some of them come back in cars already, but the president didnt know that. Let me check what are we sending. We buy 98 of the fruit that is produced in indiana. Things like that. That is i think why we should blame government and private sector that didnt went through and explain each and everybody of the stakeholders what the whole system was. So for that, when we found out the president at that time, candidate or precandidate trump was very ahead, we started trying to do our job. And we reorganized what we called in mexico, the next door room. As you remember, i forgot the name, but the original agreement, and the idea was to have a committee which is by law in mexico an advisory committee. The government doesnt have to do what we tell them, and that we form and we restructure the whole thing. I hope to have here close to 200 people that i have to coordinate trying to get that input and doing it. Then in mexico, were taking a very big step of bringing this to what we call the mexican business council, which is the head or Umbrella Organization of the private sector. We have a Steering Committee to do strategic work. We have an Intelligence Committee that is working on numbers because the other thing that we dont agree is that consideration of the number of 63 billion. When you have to ask,