Tearing up NAFTA will cause all three member countries to lose jobs

Tearing up the North American Free Trade Agreement will mean lost jobs in all three member countries, says the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But Tom Donohue also said there are ways to improve the 23-year-old trade deal between Canada, Mexico and the United States and there’s potential to create a stronger agreement that will improve North America’s overall competitiveness with the rest of the world.

Donohue, who was critical of U.S. President Donald Trump before he was elected, came to Ottawa... with a largely conciliatory message about the need to move forward constructively on bettering the economies of NAFTA’s three countries...

Trump has threatened to abandon NAFTA if it can’t be renegotiated to his satisfaction.

Donohue said the first priority with NAFTA is to “do no harm.”

“Let me say right up front that withdrawing from NAFTA would be devastating for the workers, businesses and economies of our three countries,” he said.

Canada and Mexico have become the two top U.S. export markets since 1994, he said.

While the rules of the agreement need to be modernized and improved, that should not “disrupt” the $1.3 trillion in trade between the three countries, he said. NAFTA’s visa provisions need to be upgraded to allow more movement for skilled workers, he added.

He also dismissed the possibility of NAFTA being replaced with separate bilateral agreements with the U.S. — something Canada has said it would be open to — saying that would give rise to “divergent rules” that would raise the cost of doing business, “destroy jobs and hobble our industries.”

He said the U.S. business leaders would fight hard at the NAFTA negotiating table for its “shared priorities.” The day after Trump’s victory, Canada announced it would be willing to renegotiate NAFTA to make it stronger...

This was excerpted from 7 February 2017 edition of The Canadian Press.