Working Group Members Say Specifics Not Yet Clear on Either Side in NAFTA Talks
After the third working group meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, members acknowledged that they're still shaping their specific asks -- but they also complained that Lighthizer has not countered where they have made requests. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., said changing the biologics exclusivity period in the new NAFTA should be "so easy."
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"What we want is just take it out," she said during a brief hallway interview after the meeting July 17. She said that Lighthizer has not countered by offering a shorter exclusivity period -- say, instead of 10 years, seven years.
"We're not at the conclusion part. I wish we were, I guess the one thing I can say is that we don't have any definitive changes and additions." She said she thought it was unlikely that there would be definitive changes in any of the four topics under discussion before Congress leaves Washington for five weeks.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., said that he believes the USTR can make some changes. "We're trying to shape the requests more specifically," he said. He also called the discussions "spirited."
Neal's office put out a statement after the meeting that said, "The group has now laid out comprehensive concerns and constructive proposals in three of the four issue areas in its negotiating mandate: access to medicines, labor, and the environment. We look forward to similarly comprehensive and constructive responses from Amb. Lighthizer. Progress will only come from each side working to meet the other.
"I look forward to our next meeting with USTR in a week to address the last of our four issue areas: enforcement. At that meeting, we also intend to work with USTR to map out a continuing and robust process -- including through our respective, able staffs -- for building on the working group and USTR's progress into the next phase in August.”
Some working group members -- and some other members of Congress, including Republicans -- will travel to Mexico this weekend to get more questions answered. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., said she'll be speaking to Mexican government officials to understand how labor reforms are getting underway.
The most recent meeting was on the environment. Schakowsky said water pollution and tire recycling in Mexico came up, among other issues. "I don't want to discuss all the ins and outs, we're trying to have a negotiation," she said.
Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., said Democrats bought up budget cuts to the Mexican environmental agency, and the fact that they're spending more on coal imports. "And we tossed that back and said so what will be the monitoring and rules and enforcement procedures?" Larson added, "I'm impressed with Lighthizer's... willingness to focus on the importance of enforcement, the importance of rules, and the importance of monitoring. And a lot of this, from my experience on the Hill, is that if you don't have important monitoring aspects built into any proposal, there's ways to circumvent this."
In fact, Lighthizer has pointed to Peru's change in environmental enforcement after he requested consultations on the matter. NAFTA critic Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., is less than impressed. "We've had an agreement with Peru and logging, and Peru keeps logging," she said.
Larson said that it can still be true that the two sides are making progress -- as all the working group members proclaim -- when there aren't specific proposals and counterproposals being discussed. He said that's because the questions that Democrats pose "all have to be answered constructively before you come to anything that's cast in stone."
"There are comfort levels that are being achieved," he said.