Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held firm Tuesday to the lines drawn in sand three decades ago as the latest push to preserve a North American free-trade agreement – one that still includes Canada – was poised to unfold.

Trudeau said Canadians will not sign onto a deal that does not include a dispute resolution mechanism and exemptions for cultural industries – two positions that were among the pillars of the original 1988 Canada-U.S. free trade deal.

The prime minister staked out Canada’s ground as a fresh Oct. 1 deadline and the encroaching American midterm elections cast a shadow over Wednesday’s resumption of negotiations in Washington. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland is to resume talks with U.S. trade czar Robert Lighthizer, whom she has praised as a “good faith” negotiator in the face of President Donald Trump’s Twitter barrages.

Faced with an unpredictable U.S. president ready to strike on Twitter, Trudeau said the dispute resolution mechanism in Chapter 19 ensures trade rules are followed.

“We’ve said from the very beginning that we need a dispute resolution mechanism like Chapter 19 and we will hold firm on that,” Trudeau told reporters in Vancouver.

“We will not sign a deal that is bad for Canadians and, quite frankly, not having a Chapter 19 to ensure that the rules are followed would be bad for Canadians.”

Chapter 19 allows for independent panels to resolve disputes between companies. The Trump administration views it as an infringement of U.S. sovereignty.

It was the hill that former Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney was willing to die on during the final hours of the original Canada-U.S. free trade deal in 1988. After consulting with Mulroney over the weekend, Trudeau made clear he shares that view.

The prime minister also said his government won’t sign an updated free trade accord with the U.S. and Mexico if the deal doesn’t continue exemptions for Canada’s cultural industries, which aims to protect Canada’s publishing and broadcast industries.

That too was entrenched in the original Canada-U.S. free trade deal that preceded NAFTA. Giving up the exemptions would be tantamount to giving up Canadian sovereignty and identity, Trudeau said.

“It is inconceivable to Canadians that an American network might buy Canadian media affiliates, whether it’s newspapers or TV stations or TV networks,” he said.

“So we’ve made it very clear that defending that cultural exemption is something that is fundamental to Canadians.”

Canada and the U.S. need to present a text to the U.S. Congress by Oct. 1 in order to join the deal the Trump administration signed with Mexico last week, trade analysts say.

The overall goal is to reach a deal by Dec. 1 so Congress can give its approval to a new NAFTA before Mexico’s new president takes office.

Otherwise, Trump is threatening to move ahead on a deal with Mexico that excludes Canada.

Canada enters Wednesday’s talks with some strength on preserving Chapter 19 because American companies need its anti-dumping safeguards more than Canada’s, according to Toronto trade lawyer Cyndee Todgham Cherniak.

Foreign companies seeking relief through Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal are often repeatedly coming up empty handed, said Todgham Cherniak, a former federal tax court adviser.

She said that’s because a recent ruling by the court emphasized that it did not have jurisdiction under the Special Import Measures Act to change so-called “dumping margins.”

Canadian negotiators are also trying to protect Canada’s dairy sector from American demands in NAFTA renegotiations.

The two sides broke off talks Friday as Trump formally notified Congress of the deal with Mexico, saying Canada might join later.

But in recent days he has become more aggressive towards Canada on Twitter – bluster that some trade experts are dismissing as a predictable negotiating tactic.

On Saturday, Trump said there is “no political necessity” to keep Canada in NAFTA and he warned Congress not to interfere or he would kill the pact.

U.S. business and labour leaders have warned Trump not to dump Canada from NAFTA.

Trump’s “bombastic rhetoric” ought to be ignored because he has no power to override the opposition in Congress to exclude Canada, and he needs 60-days notice to terminate NAFTA, said Derek Holt, vice-president and head of capital markets at Scotiabank Global Economics.

Holt wrote in a Tuesday note that Congress will not allow Trump “to skirt past Canada in NAFTA negotiations given the long line-ups of members of Congress – Democrats and Republicans – saying they will not support a bilateral deal” with Mexico.

With the U.S. midterms eight weeks away, and Trump facing pressure to maintain the Republican hold on the House and Senate, the influence of Congress will permeate the resumption of Wednesday’s talks.

Congress must approve any rewrite of the deal and could refuse to endorse an agreement that excludes Canada. But that’s not set in stone, said Dan Ujczo, an Ohio-based trade lawyer with Dickinson Wright.

“Congress will support Canada throughout September,” he said. “After that, Congress will have a tough choice to make in terms of going forward with a good deal with Mexico, opening Mexico’s agricultural markets as we brace for the long haul with China.”

The U.S. and Mexico reportedly reached an agreement on a new trade deal on Monday, bringing months of talks on a replacement for NAFTA to an end.

Trump hinted on Monday morning that a trade deal with Mexico could be reached shortly.

“A big deal looking good with Mexico!” Trump tweeted.

 The president’s comments echo those of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who said Sunday a new trade agreement was nearing.

“I think it’d be very soon,” McCarthy, R-Calif., told Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “We’d vote on it in the next Congress.”

He noted the need for a “modernization” of the trade agreement, which was enacted in 1994 under President Bill Clinton. The deal created a trilateral trade bloc between the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

NAFTA has come under fierce scrutiny by President Trump since his time on the campaign trail, even calling the agreement the “worst trade deal ever made.” Attempts to form a new pact faltered numerous times between the three countries, and talks with Mexico have been focused on creating new rules for the auto industry. Trump has argued that lower wages for employees in Mexico have cost jobs at General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler – “The Big Three” – all of which have production sites in Mexico. The president said in June that the deal could remain trilateral or could be renegotiated into two separate arrangements.

Mexico’s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told reporters on Sunday a deal between the U.S. and Mexico was nearing completion.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. and Mexican trade negotiators are close to squaring away bilateral differences on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and will resume talks on Monday morning, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said on Sunday.

Earlier, Guajardo told reporters the two sides were likely “hours” away from reaching a common position, but in the evening he said more work still needed to be done, and that talks would start again on Monday at 9 a.m. local time in Washington.

“We’ve continued making progress,” Guajardo said.

The Mexico-U.S. discussions have focused on crafting new rules for the automotive industry, which U.S. President Donald Trump has put at the heart of his drive to rework the 24-year-old pact he says has been a “disaster” for American workers.

Canada has sat out the most recent phase of the year-long discussions, and once it rejoined the talks, the three sides would need to work for at least another week, Guajardo said.

Leaving the offices of U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer late on Sunday, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said Canada would return once bilateral issues were resolved. “But we haven’ve finished this stage yet,” he said.

The two sides have been gradually nearing agreement on autos, and one source close to the negotiations said at the weekend there was now “little” separating the two.

Industry sources say they are close to agreeing on raising the regional automotive content threshold for tariff-free access under NAFTA to around 75 percent from 62.5 percent.

Still, the Trump administration has been seeking to impose a cap on Mexican car and SUV exports to the United States that could be sent duty-free or at a 2.5 percent tariff, complicating the auto talks, three people with knowledge of the matter said.

Two automakers say the United States want Mexican exports of cars and SUVs to be capped at about 2 million units, up from some 1.77 million exported in 2017, excluding pickup trucks.

Including pickups, Mexico exported more than 2.3 million vehicles to the United States last year.

Mexico’s economy ministry declined to comment. A USTR representative did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump said on Saturday that Washington could reach agreement with Mexico “soon” as the chief trade negotiator of Mexico’s incoming president signaled possible solutions to energy rules and a contentious U.S. “sunset clause” demand.

Since Mexico’s July 1 presidential election, the bilateral talks have been complicated by divisions between the incoming and outgoing Mexican administrations over energy policy.

The team of leftist Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has resisted enshrining the 2013-14 opening of the oil and gas sector enacted by outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto in the new NAFTA, people close to the talks say.

Long skeptical of foreign companies entering the Mexican oil industry, Lopez Obrador opposed Pena Nieto’s energy reform.

Jesus Seade, the incoming Mexican government’s chief NAFTA negotiator, said the issue had been “ironed out” at the NAFTA talks, without going into detail. He said this week it was not a “substantive” matter and that Lopez Obrador’s team had wanted to check the terms were consistent with the Mexican constitution.

If three-way talks run into September, final approval of the deal in Mexico will likely pass to Lopez Obrador, because under fast track authority, the U.S. Congress needs 90 days’ notice to vote on a new NAFTA once the renegotiation is finished.

Lopez Obrador is due to take office on Dec. 1.

WASHINGTON – Foreign-brand automakers with U.S. plants do not support Trump administration rules to raise the amount of local content in North American-made vehicles, a group representing companies including Toyota Motor Corp., Volkswagen AG and Hyundai Motor Co. has told key U.S. lawmakers.

Talks between Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer are due to resume Tuesday in Washington to try to resolve remaining bilateral issues so that Canada, which has been sidelined for weeks from the negotiations, can return to the bargaining table.

The automakers’ position was in a previously unreported Aug. 16 letter from their “Here for America” group to top trade-focused members of Congress. The letter could raise resistance to a revamped North American Free Trade Agreement from lawmakers in southern states, where foreign manufacturers have built auto plants.

“We remain concerned that, without further clarifications, assurances and modifications, many of those companies producing vehicles in multiple states will not be in a position to support legislation implementing a NAFTA 2.0,” the group said in the letter, signed by John Bozzella, president of the Association of Global Automakers.

Automotive experts have said that some foreign brand automakers with smaller North American manufacturing footprints and fewer U.S. research and development staff may have difficulty meeting the more stringent content requirements for years.

The group said its members, which also include Honda Motor Co., Daimler AG, BMW AG, Nissan Motor Co., Kia Motors Corp., Subaru Corp. and Volvo, a unit of China’s Geely Automobile Holdings, account for nearly 50 percent of U.S. vehicle production.

At the same time, the American Automotive Policy Council, which represents Detroit’s Big Three automakers is “encouraged by the direction of the discussions,” said Matt Blunt, who heads the trade group.

“We share the administration’s overall goals of strengthening U.S. auto-manufacturing and creating jobs and given the importance of NAFTA to U.S. industry we urge the negotiators to quickly complete the negotiations,” added Blunt, whose group represents General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV.

The United States and Mexico are closing in on a bilateral deal on autos that would lift the requirement for North American content in regionally made vehicles to at least 70 percent from the current 62.5 percent.

The deal is expected to require that some 40 percent of the value come from high wage locations paying at least $16 an hour, meaning the United States and Canada, a Mexican source close to the talks said.

United States Trade Representative officials have been meeting in recent days with individual automakers to secure support for potential changes, according to auto industry sources.

A USTR spokeswoman declined comment.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who launched the renegotiation of the 1994 pact a year ago, has said he wants the reworked deal to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States, particularly in autos and auto parts.

Other key unresolved issues include the phase-in time for the new automotive rules to take effect and whether the U.S. demand for a “sunset” clause that forces a renegotiation every five years is adopted, making long-term investment decisions more difficult.

The letter from the ad-hoc “Here for America” group also raised concerns that national security tariffs on autos, auto parts, steel and aluminum would undermine the benefit of a NAFTA agreement.

MIAMI, Aug. 14, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — With a vision toward empowering Mexico’s emerging middle class through more transparent lending solutions, a team of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and executives with previous experience at leading international online lending companies, including Enova International, 4Finance and Cream Finance, recently formed Boom Credit, Inc.

The company launched its initial loan offering in May, and in less than three months has grown to over 50,000 registered users. Among its registered users, 35% requested the loan for their own small business needs. This is consistent with Mexican labor statistics which reflect that only 53% of adults maintain formal employment (ENIF, 2015). As a result, the majority of Mexico’s population is either unbanked or underbanked, while holding negative views of traditional banking.

Boom Credit seeks to address the greatest pain points of the emerging Mexican middle-class consumer by emphasizing convenience through a mobile-first product, empowerment through financial educational tools, and loyalty through rewards for positive credit behavior.

“We believe that offering solutions to facilitate people’s quick access to credit through their mobile devices is the first step. Second, by fostering loyalty through financial education and good consumer behavior, we believe that we can help consumers build a better financial future,” said Mariano Zadeh, CEO and Co-Founder of Boom Credit.

Paco De Vega, Director of Boom Credit Mexico and Co-Founder, commented, “Mexico is the largest and fastest growing fintech market in Latin America. We believe that our experience in the sector, combined with our unique educational approach and technology, will allow us to offer a more inclusive solution to Mexican consumers that favors their economic development.”

Boom Credit is Based in Miami, FL and prior to its May 2018 launch, raised a $5MM seed financing round from entrepreneurs with extensive background in consumer technology and emerging markets. In addition to participation by local entrepreneurs, the Company’s Advisory Board includes Timothy Ho, former CEO of Enova International.

Ho stated, “Boom Credit has assembled a team of driven, talented professionals with a unique understanding of online consumer finance and have created a compelling value proposition that should resonate among underserved consumers across Latin America. I am honored with the opportunity to serve on the board of advisors of this promising company.”

Days after President Trump touted trade negotiations with Mexico – White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Kevin Hassett said on Monday negotiators from the U.S. and Mexico are “very, very close” to a deal on the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“The team has been working overtime, late nights, going through what I would almost characterize as the final details,” he told “Mornings with Maria.”

While Hassett stayed tight-lipped on details, Trump tweeted on Friday that a deal with the U.S.’ third-largest trading partner – after China and Canada – is “coming along nicely” and any deal must take care of autoworkers and farmers.

“You should stay tuned because right now it’s closer than it’s been since I’ve been here,” Hassett, a former resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who was appointed as Trump’s chief economist in early 2017, added.

The modernisation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has seen “very important developments,” though much remains to be done, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo has said.

 NAFTA partners Mexico, Canada and the US are still at odds over many issues, Guajardo, who heads Mexico’s negotiating team, told reporters on Monday on the sidelines of an academic event, Xinhua news agency reported.

One of those issues is a proposal by the US to tighten the rules of origin in the automobile sector, a move both Canada and Mexico have opposed.

However, Mexico has made a counter proposal and the US has modified its original demands, so negotiators meeting in Washington over the past two weeks have been looking at both of those proposals, said Guajardo.

“In two weeks there have been very important developments in balancing out several topics of interest on the table in regard to Mexico and the United States, from a trade perspective,” Guajardo said.

“The thing is that there are many topics on the table,” said Guajardo, who added he plans to travel to Washington this week to check on the progress of the talks.

“There are automotive rules of origin, there are rules in the fiber optics sector, there are rules in steel, and we are reviewing the whole package of regulations,” said Guajardo.

NAFTA was subjected to renegotiation in August 2017 on the urging of US President Donald Trump, who believes the original trade agreement harms US industry and jobs.

Guajardo was at Mexico’s prestigious Colegio de Mexico to inaugurate a new postgraduate degree in international trade negotiation.

MEXICO CITY/OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico and South Korea will meet in Geneva next week to discuss how to respond to threats by U.S. President Donald Trump to impose tariffs on U.S. imports of autos and car parts, officials familiar with the talks said.

The Trump administration has come under heavy criticism from automakers, foreign governments and others as it considers tariffs of up to 25 percent, a levy critics warn will hike vehicle costs, hurting auto sales and global industry jobs.

Several auto manufacturing powers have been talking to each other in recent days about their fears and a possible coordinated response to Trump’s “Section 232” investigation, which he ordered on May 23, into whether auto imports are a threat to U.S. security, sources say.

The probe could be completed within weeks, although similar ones ordered last year that led to tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum took about 10 months. The Commerce Department has 270 days to offer recommendations to the president after such a probe starts. He then has 90 days to act upon them.

It was not immediately clear what kind of response the countries could be looking at, although Canada, the EU and Mexico retaliated with their own tariffs after Trump imposed levies on steel and aluminum imports in March. Another option is to fight the United States at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Deputy ministers will gather in Geneva on July 31 to hear each other’s views, a Canadian official and a Mexican official told Reuters, asking to not be named because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

“The meeting is meant to bring together major auto producing nations so we can discuss our concerns over the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Section 232 investigation of automobiles and parts,” said the Canadian government official.

Mexico’s economy ministry confirmed Deputy Economy Minister Juan Carlos Baker will travel to Geneva for “work meetings about several subjects,” including meeting World Trade Organization (WTO) chief Roberto Azevedo. The Canadian foreign ministry declined to comment.

According to the WTO website, Azevedo will meet Baker on Monday, followed by Canada’s Deputy Trade Minister Timothy Sargent and Japan’s Senior Deputy Foreign Minister Kazuyuki Yamazaki on Tuesday. The Mexican official said the meetings were related to the auto tariff issue.

Eventual tariffs on autos could hit companies including Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co, Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp and Germany’s BMW, as well as global factories for U.S. brands General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV.

Trump’s agreement on Wednesday to refrain from imposing car tariffs on the EU in return for reduced trade barriers for U.S. products has helped cool fears of a trade war, but his final decision will not be known until the security investigation is concluded in coming months.

The U.S. automakers lowered their full-year profit forecasts on Wednesday due to the trade frictions, and their stocks fell as investors bet the disputes would hurt margins and sales.

Although hopes of a breakthrough in U.S.-EU trade talks boosted carmakers on Thursday, the planned meetings are a sign that auto-producing nations want to prepare for the worst.

MANAGED TRADE

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland raised the need for “cooperation by major interested nations” regarding the U.S. auto investigation during a meeting in Ottawa with South Korean Trade Minister Kim Hyun-chong last week, the South Korean ministry said in a statement after the meeting.

On a tour that also took in the United States, Kim broached the idea of working together to face tariffs at a meeting of the Pacific Alliance trade bloc in Mexico on Monday, said another Mexican official and a diplomat with knowledge of the matter, asking to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak about it.

Officials consulted by Reuters in Canada, Mexico and South Korea all said such discussions were preliminary, with another Canadian official characterizing them as comparing notes on the state of play of the tariff investigation, rather than discussing a coordinated reaction in detail.

“We have checked and listened to each other’s stance. However, as the auto tariff probe is still under way, it’s hard to know how things will turn out at this stage,” said a South Korean trade ministry official who declined to be named because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

“(Probe) results should come out first to work on a joint response,” the official said.

Canada is concerned South Korea may achieve an exemption that would give it a competitive advantage, the diplomat said, after the Asian country accepted quotas on its steel exports in return for an exemption from the metals tariffs that hit Canada, Mexico and other allies.

Ahn Dukgeun, a Seoul National University professor who advises the government on trade matters, said South Korea’s government was divided over what course to take.

“South Korea is at crossroads,” he said, on whether to “deepen managed trade” with the United States or to get tough, such as complaining to the WTO and using retaliatory tariffs.

Because of varying domestic rules on tariff retaliation, coordinating any action between several countries “quickly becomes fiendishly difficult,” the diplomat said.

“The idea is that we want to know that if we go to the WTO, if we use NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) in our case or if we retaliate,” our partners will be doing similar things, said the diplomat.

The conversations are more intense than before the steel and aluminum tariffs, the diplomat and the Canadian official said. One reason may be that countries now know Trump does not hesitate to pull the trigger on tariffs.

Another is the economic weight of the auto industry. The United States imported $173 billion of cars and $70 billion of auto parts in 2016, compared to $21 billion of steel

PUERTO VALLARTA, MEXICO — 

Led by Mexico, major Latin American nations pledged to deepen commercial and economic ties on Tuesday as they sought to counter the risk of a deepening trade war sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy.

Leaders of the Pacific Alliance and Mercosur trading blocs met in the Mexican resort city of Puerto Vallarta, seeking to present a united front against potential disruptions stemming from Trump’s threats to slap new tariffs on major markets.

“The aim was to strengthen the links between the two most important trade blocs in Latin America,” said outgoing Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who has spent much of the past two years mired in trade negotiations with Trump.

“Today we’re sending the world a clear signal we’re moving onward with regional integration and free trade,” he added.

Later this week, top Mexican officials will renew talks with the Trump administration in Washington aimed at renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Mexico is heavily dependent on the United States as an export market and Trump’s threat to pull out of NAFTA have rattled investors and put pressure on the peso currency.

Pena Nieto said the Pacific Alliance, which comprises Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru, agreed with Mercosur – made up of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay – to explore new ways of cooperation to boost trade in areas of common interest.

The eight countries pledged to undertake a series of steps, including making goods trade easier, helping small and medium-sized firms do business internationally and boosting the knowledge-based economy, Pena Nieto told the summit.

Trump has slapped billions of dollars worth of duties on Chinese goods and is weighing fresh steps against auto imports.

Still, Jesus Seade, the incoming NAFTA negotiator of Mexico’s next president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, said on Tuesday he believed a new NAFTA deal would be reached in the next few months ahead of the talks in Washington.