WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Auto industry groups from Canada, Mexico and the United States are pushing back against the Trump administration’s demand for higher U.S. automotive content in a modernized North American Free Trade Agreement. 

At talks underway this week in Washington, automaker and parts groups from all three countries were urging negotiators against tighter rules of origin, said Eduardo Solis, president of the Mexican Automotive Industry Association. 

But U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer confirmed the industry’s fears that the administration of President Donald Trump was seeking major changes to these rules to try to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico. 

“Rules of origin, particularly on autos and auto parts, must require higher NAFTA content and substantial U.S. content. Country of origin should be verified, not ‘deemed,'” Lighthizer said on Wednesday in opening remarks. 

Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland both said they were not in favor of specific national rules of origin within NAFTA – a position that the industry agrees with. 

“We certainly think a U.S.-specific requirement would greatly complicate the ability of companies, particularly small- and medium-size enterprises, to take advantage of the benefits of NAFTA,” said Matt Blunt, president of the American Automotive Policy Council. The trade group represents Detroit automakers General Motors Co (GM.N) Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCHA.MI). 

His comments were echoed by Flavio Volpe, president of Canada’s Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association. 

“Anytime you say this list or a part of this list has to come from one specific country you’re going to hurt all three countries,” he said. 

The United States had an autos and auto parts trade deficits of $74 billion with Mexico and $5.6 billion with Canada, both major components of overall U.S. goods trade deficits with its North American neighbors — deficits that Lighthizer said could no longer continue. 

Lighthizer’s mention of tightening verification requirements is a reference to expanding the parts tracing list, which is used to determine whether companies meet the 62.5 percent North American content requirement for autos and 60 percent for components. 

Devised in the early 1990s, the tracing list covers almost none of the sophisticated electronics found in today’s cars and trucks, most of which come from Asia. Putting these on the tracing list could force suppliers to source these components from North America or pay tariffs on them. 

Volpe said any changes to this must also capture the North American system design work and software content for these components that is not currently included. 

“A car today probably has 25 to 30 percent advanced electronics, software content in it. In 1994, it had zero or 1 percent,” Volpe said. “Could you address the tracing to help you get to NAFTA compliance level by capturing some of the work that’s being done in Silicon Valley or Waterloo, Canada? Yes.” 

John Bozzella CEO of the Association of Global Automakers, which represents international-brand carmakers, said NAFTA has allowed a major expansion of auto exports, with more than 1 million more vehicles built annually in the United States than in 1993. 

“Negotiators should be mindful of this success as they work to modernize the agreement,” Bozzella said, whose organization represents international brand carmakers with U.S. plants, including Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T), Honda Motor Co Ltd (7267.T) and BMW (BMWG.DE). 

Mexico’s unemployment rate fell to its lowest level in 11 years in the second quarter, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) announced on Monday.

According to the report, the unemployment rate stands at 3.5 per cent of the economically active population (EAP), the lowest level since the second quarter of 2006.

INEGI President Julio Santaella Tweeted that the country had seen a rise of 765,000 jobs year-on-year, with 681,000 in the formal sector and 84,000 employed informally.

Between April and June, 236,000 people found jobs, leaving the total number of unemployed in Mexico at 1.9 million, Xinhua reported.

However, INEGI also reported that 29.5 million people still work informally, meaning they are not working as registered employees and pay no tax.

The Mexican economy is currently growing at a moderate pace, with GDP climbing by 2.3 percent in 2016 and at 1.8 per cent in the second quarter of 2017.

This continued growth will depend largely on how Mexico fares in the upcoming renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a free trade agreement with the US and Canada.

WASHINGTON — The cost of Mexican labour will be an issue in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, participants acknowledged at an auto-industry conference, touching on one of the key sectors up for discussion.

It’s an issue officials from the national governments have been raising in the runup to the talks — the idea that any new agreement should address the ongoing, yawning wage disparity between auto workers in Mexico and their northern peers.

At a Washington gathering organized by the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association on Wednesday, the head of an international auto group said he’s prepared for labour to become an issue after talks start this month.

“Labour standards will be part of the negotiation,” said John Bozzella, president and CEO of Global Automakers, which represents major companies like Honda, Hyundai and Nissan.

“I would expect that.”

He demurred on whether he might welcome labour changes, saying he’ll await some details: “Really, that’s a question that requires us to have more understanding of all the elements of the discussion in play. So I can’t really answer that question now. Maybe later in the process.”

The basic issue involves the competitive advantage Mexico enjoys in attracting auto plants — low labour costs in a country whose auto workers take home a fraction of what their peers in Canada and the U.S. do.

Unions peg the average auto-worker wage in Mexico at just over $4 an hour.

This disparity is a pressing priority for some policy-makers. With auto companies preparing to make a historic round of investments in next-generation electric and autonomous vehicles, officials want to guarantee a share for their countries — including Canada, which has seen its proportion dwindle.

The unions describe the wage gap as an immediate priority and have proposed labour reforms including new rules for forming unions. All three national governments have also spoken about labour reforms as an issue for the talks.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross cited it as a top priority earlier this year in an interview with CNBC. He said the supposed point of NAFTA was to gradually converge living standards between the countries: “That really hasn’t happened on the Mexican side,” he said. “Mexican workers are really not at all better off.”

Soon after Donald Trump’s election win, President Enrique Pena Nieto said he was willing to discuss labour standards.

International data illustrates how Mexican wages have stagnated.

In fact, OECD figures show Mexican average incomes even lower in inflation-adjusted U.S. dollars in 2015 than the $16,000 when NAFTA came into effect. That’s compared with Canada’s average wage, which has grown 38 per cent to more than $48,000 over that same period between 1994 and 2015; U.S. wages grew just under 33 per cent to $59,700 over that span.

But those figures don’t tell the whole story.

A McKinsey report in 2014 argued that Mexico has a two-tier economy: with one benefiting from gains under NAFTA-related manufacturing and another in decline related to more traditional sectors isolated from trade.

Another participant at the Washington conference said it’s complicated. He urged people to note a broader international context; productivity levels, not just wages; and evolving attitudes in Mexican society.

Eric Farnsworth of the Council of the Americas agreed that labour will be a NAFTA topic.

“You’re right. It’s clearly an issue. It has been an issue for some time,” he said when asked about labour reforms.

But he said people looking at Mexico when discussing cheap labour are pointing in the wrong direction. North American workers face the greatest low-cost wage competition from outside their trade zone, he said — not within.

“Mexico is not the low-cost choice. The cost of Mexican labour is a lot higher than Asia or other developing markets,” Farnsworth said.

“The idea that Mexico is some sort of a backward place where labour is viewed, and the environment is, as an afterthought — if it ever was true I don’t think it increasingly is. I think this is clearly a country that has advanced, moved forward, and will continue to do so.

“Not because it’s a part of NAFTA — or because they think the United States wants it. But because their own people are demanding it.”

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A U.S. proposal for Mexico and Canada to vastly raise the value of online purchases that can be imported duty-free from stores like Amazon.com and eBay is emerging as a flashpoint in an upcoming renegotiation of the NAFTA trade deal. 

Vulnerable industries like footwear, textiles and bricks and mortar retail in Mexico and Canada are pushing back hard against the proposal by the U.S. trade representative to raise Mexican and Canadian duty-free import limits for e-commerce to the U.S. level of $800, from current thresholds of $50 and C$20, respectively. 

For the Mexicans, the main worry is that such a move could open a back door for cheap imports from Asia and beyond. For Canadian retailers, the fear is that e-commerce companies will undercut their prices. 

The U.S. plan was unveiled in July as part of the Trump administration’s goals to renegotiate the 25-year-old treaty. 

While Mexico and Canada are still formulating their responses, Mexico City is leaning strongly against the proposal in its current form, and Ottawa may not be far behind. 

The proposed $800 level “opens a completely unnecessary door” to imports from outside the NAFTA trading bloc, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said on Thursday on the sidelines of a NAFTA-related event, calling it “a very sensitive topic.” 

The growing controversy over how to account for a burgeoning regional e-commerce sector dominated by the United States highlights a rare area where the Trump administration is pushing to liberalize trade rules rather than tightening them. 

Much of Trump’s criticism of NAFTA stems from his belief it has decimated U.S. manufacturing as companies shifted production to Mexican factories with cheaper labor, creating a U.S. trade deficit with Mexico worth more than $60 billion. 

TOP PRIORITY 

But Mexican and Canadian business leaders fear the rule change could make their industries vulnerable, arguing that unless online retailers can show products are made in North America, they should not be exempted from duties levied on other imports. 

“We can’t open the door to inputs from outside the region coming in tax-free when we’re talking about the need to reduce the deficit and create jobs,” said Moises Kalach, who fronts the international negotiating arm of Mexico’s CCE business lobby. “It goes completely against that.” 

Guajardo said Mexico’s retail group the National Self-service and Department Store Association, which includes powerful members such as Wal-Mart de Mexico, had visited him last week to express concerns about the proposal. 

He said the group’s representative brought to the meeting a $250 jacket bought on the internet as evidence that violations to the existing limit were already threatening members’ businesses.

“Suppose there was an $800 free limit. Can you imagine how many shirts Vietnam could send to Mexico in a packet below that price? They could easily flood us with packets of 100,” he said, while recognizing the need to smooth customs processes. 

Complicating efforts to agree on a common set of rules is a tangle of diverging regulations on tax and how the restrictions on imports differ in the region depending on whether they enter by air, sea or land. 

Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc declined to comment for this story. 

eBay has previously said it supports an increase to Canada’s low-value customs ‘de minimis’ threshold for ecommerce to promote seamless access to the global marketplace.” Increasing the threshold “absolutely” is eBay’s top priority in the NAFTA renegotiation, a person familiar with the matter said.

Canadian opposition is being led by retailers, whose industry association said it was concerned about “the behavioral shift that would inevitably result if shoppers can buy a far wider range and higher value of goods tax-free and duty-free.” 

The Retail Council of Canada said in a submission to the government that clothes, books, toys, sporting goods and consumer electronics would be among the items most affected, and expressed confidence Ottawa would fend off such requests. 

NOT FROM OTHER NATIONS 

“eBay in particular has lead this charge to three different finance ministers in a row – Jim Flaherty, Joe Oliver, and Bill Morneau – and in each case they have failed,” said Karl Littler, a spokesman for the Retail Council of Canada. 

There have been hints from Canada’s government about a compromise under which a higher limit would exempt products ordered from e-commerce from duties but not sales taxes. 

“When it comes to waiving duties and taxes, we need to carefully consider the impact that would have on Canadians and on Canadian businesses,” said Chloe Luciani-Girouard, a spokeswoman for Morneau. 

Mexican firms could accept a higher import limit for goods produced in the NAFTA region – but not from other nations, said Alejandro Gomez Tamez, executive president of the Chamber of Commerce for the footwear industry in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, a hub of textile manufacturing. 

“When a product comes in, even if it’s packaged and sent from the United States, if it’s from a third country, it should pay duties,” he said.

The rhetoric against a neighbouring country dominated Donald Trump’s presidential campaign: a billion-dollar wall, a crackdown on immigration, and a steep border tax. Yet when Trump fired the opening shot in his trade war, it was aimed not at Mexico – but at Canada.

First came an average 20% tariff on Canadian softwood lumber. Months later the Trump administration piled another tariff of nearly 7% on the sector. 

Trump launched a broad attack on several sectors north of the border. “Canada, what they’ve done to our dairy farmworkers is a disgrace,” he told reporters. “We can’t let Canada or anybody else take advantage and do what they did to our workers and to our farmers … included in there is lumber, timber and energy. So we’re going to have to get to the negotiating table with Canada very, very quickly.”

The sharp reversal – a few months earlier Trump had characterised the US-Canada relationship as “outstanding” – came as a surprise to many. 

“Step aside, China and Mexico: Canada is now Donald Trump’s whipping-boy du jour on trade,” said the Canadian Press, while Politico offered their thoughts on why president had not gone after Mexico first: “Canada is an easy target and doesn’t have as many weapons to fight back.”

Others said it was long overdue. “Canada was getting a free ride,” said Federico Estévez, a professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. “All of the fire was headed south of the US border – so Canada was getting off easy.”

Estévez pointed to the looming renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement to explain the turnaround. “I think Trump understood something basic, which is that the US will not be able to tweak Nafta or rework it unless it splits up Canada and Mexico and makes Canada squirm just as well,” he said. “You want to open up some battlefronts – and that’s what he’s effectively done, to the surprise of everybody.”

With the renegotiations slated to begin on 16 August, all of the interactions of past months – from pleasantries to attacks – are again under the microscope. Against a backdrop of grievances over trade deficits and protectionist policies, officials in both Canada and Mexico are also scrambling to shore up strategies to best handle a president who ranks among the more unpredictable elements of the upcoming negotiations. 

Both countries have much at stake. Canada sends about three-quarters of its annual exports to the US while nearly 400,000 people a day cross the shared border. In Mexico, some 80% of exports end up in the US.

Mexican and Canadian officials have been laying the groundwork for months. Trudeau’s inner circle have fostered close contacts with the Trump administration, while representatives from Canadian government and business have been criss-crossing the US to reinforce how Americans benefit from their relationship with Canada, said Colin Robertson of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

“There have been, I think, 170 visits by Canadians to the States since January. And not just to Washington but also into Trump territory,” he said. “And it’s not just ministers, it’s legislators and premiers and provincial legislators.” 

The aim, said Robertson, is to mitigate what he described as Trump’s “situational politics”, which see the president shift stances depending on the audience he’s addressing. He pointed to Trump’s swipe at Canadian dairy as an example, as it came while the president addressed an audience in Wisconsin.

In Mexico, the job of managing relations with the Trump administration has fallen to Luis Videgaray, a foreign minister whose experience in the world of finance has overlapped with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. 

Despite initial setbacks – Trump signed an executive order to build the border wall and tweeted that Mexico would pay for it even as Videgaray was heading to Washington to meet with Kushner – the minister and his small team have earned some plaudits as the threat of Trump has apparently diminished for Mexico and the peso bounced back after a Trump-inspired slump. 

So far, Mexico’s strategy for handling Trump seems to lie in trying to save some provisions of Nafta at all costs, such as investor protections, analysts say.

The government closed online consultations late last month, though it has attracted criticism for appearing to pay closer attention to the country’s big business elite while ignoring the interests of smaller firms and beleaguered workers. 

“I’ve not read the national interests of Mexico spelled out,” said Carlos Heredia of the Centre for Research and Teaching of Economics. “There hasn’t been any sort of open consultation – the online consultation is sort of a joke – but there’s nothing saying, ‘We are going to represent the national interest of Mexico, not just the top echelons of business and politics.’”

Mexico released its objectives for Nafta negotiations last week. It joined Canada in opposing US plans to eliminate dispute resolution mechanism known as Chapter 19, but also will propose anti-graft initiatives and provisions for small business and the digital economy. Energy will also be on the table as Mexico approved a reform to open its oil industry in 2013.

From immigration to the environment, Trump’s political stances – widely despised in both Mexico and Canada – could colour discussions at the negotiating table, raising questions of how America’s neighbours will respond.

While Trudeau’s approval ratings remain high, suggesting many Canadians are comfortable with his reluctance to chastise Trump,Mexico’s Enrique Peña Nieto is even more unpopular than the US leader – and his apparent unwillingness to talk tough with Trump is widely as a weakness.

“The greatest problem of the Mexican response to Trump has been that the Mexican government has acted over and over again as if the constituency of its foreign policy were only one person: Donald Trump,” said Carlos Bravo Regidor of CIDE. “This has left it open to vulnerabilities, the most of important of which is an inability to voice the legitimate grievances Trump causes many regular Mexicans.”

Despite their differences, Trump has demonstrated a level of cordiality and friendship with Trudeau, said Laura Dawson, who heads the Canada Institute at Washington’s Wilson Centre.

“It’s kind of funny in the tweets that I’ve been reading. When he’s talking about his two neighbours, he calls them, Justin and the Mexican president,” she said. “I don’t know if he doesn’t know Trudeau’s last name, I don’t know if he knows Peña Nieto’s name at all – but its always Justin and the Mexicans.”

What’s certain is that Canada and Mexico now realise they’re in it together. “There was some public opinion, at least in Canada, that we could go at it alone, without Mexico because they’re in the crosshairs and we’re not. I think that that sentiment has really subsided,” said Dawson, pointing to official statements from both countries that reiterate the importance of the trilateral agreement.

While Trump has gone after both neighbours, he’s also demonstrated that he’s open to changing his mind on things, said Dawson.

“He’s willing to find a parade and get in front of it, so I think that if Canada and Mexico are skillful enough about giving the president some wins that he can claim – you know, modernisation of the agreement, certain things that affect labour or manufacturing – I think they can also move ahead on the modernisation agenda on the Nafta.”

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – A manufacturing company originally from Japan, Toyota Motor Corp. plans to produce pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) at a new plant located in the Mexican state of Guanajuato.

“We will concentrate only on pickup trucks in the beginning, and are studying the potential of SUVs in the future,” said Luis Lozano, a spokesman for Toyota Mexico, as quoted by Reuters on Sunday, August 6, 2017.

Lozano said the plan for now is that the company will assemble Tacoma truck models. As for the SUV model, it is still in the learning stage.

Both models are indeed quite lucrative products for the North American market. Trucks and SUVs account for about 65 percent of the market in North America.

This decision was taken when Toyota took a 5 percent stake from Mazda Motor Corp. as part of its second alliance to set up a factory in the United States with an investment value of $ 1.6 billion.

The investment value incurred by the company in the region will be the same although there will be a change of plan. “The investment we counted when announcing the decision to set up a plant is worth USD 1 billion,” said Lozano.

San Antonio-based refiner Valero Energy Corp. announced Thursday a long-term deal to export refined fuels to Mexico.

The deal with IEnova, a Mexico-subsidiary of San Diego, California-based energy services company Sempra Energy, will utilize a new $155 million, 1.4 million barrel refined product storage facility located in the Gulf of Mexico port of Veracruz. 

The facility — which has a 20-year concession agreement with the Port Authority of Veracruz — will hold gasoline, diesel and jet fuel and will be completed by the end of 2018, according to an IEnova news release. 

“With the recent Constitutional reform, it is now possible for Valero to import refined products directly into Mexico for further distribution, including branded sales,” Joe Gorder, Valero’s president and CEO, said in a news release. “This transaction will enable us to extend our supply chain to efficiently supply gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to the growing Mexican market.”

The governments of Mexico and Japan on Monday ratified a bilateral free trade agreement as part of the visit by the Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray Caso to Japan.

Officials underscored the relevance of the bilateral economic relationship, which has surpassed US$ 21.5 billion, placing Japan as Mexico’s third largest trading partner. Japan is the only country in Asia with which Mexico has a free trade agreement in force.

During the meeting, Caso and his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida, highlighted as “excellent” the bilateral relations and the increase in direct investment in Mexico, which attracted more than a thousand Japanese companies to the country.

This time, they did not hold a press conference with Trump.

When then-Candidate Trump found out in February of 2016 that Carrier would be closing their Indianapolis plant and sending those 2,100 jobs to Mexico, it became a cornerstone of his campaign. He railed against companies like Carrier for outsourcing jobs and threatened penalizing them with heavy tax.

“If they’re going to fire all their people, move their plant to Mexico, build air conditioners, and think they’re going to sell those air conditioners to the United States — there’s going to be a tax,” Trump said at a rally in April. “It could be 25 percent, it could be 35 percent, it could be 15 percent — I haven’t determined.”

After winning the election, Trump and then-Vice President-elect Mike Pence announced with much fanfare in late November that they had reached a deal with Carrier to keep around 1,000 jobs at the company’s Indianapolis plant

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Just after the election and before his inauguration, Trump held a huge rally in Indianapolis as part of his post-election “thank you” tour. In the speech, he said he was thankful for the “two massive victories, one after another” and took credit for saving the Carrier jobs, asking the crowd, “isn’t is nice to win?” The Carrier deal was seen by his supporters as proof that the incoming president’s business savvy was enough to keep American jobs from being outsourced.

Following the Carrier announcement, he warned that business that left the United States would face a heavy tax, up to 35%.

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Now, six months into his presidency, Trump doesn’t appear to be making good on that promise

Today, 338 employees will be let go from their jobs at the Indianapolis plant in the first wave of cuts at Carrier. In total, 630 people will lose their jobs by the end of the year as Carrier relocates their fan coil production to Mexico. Additionally, Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies Corp., is still forging ahead with their plans to close the Huntington, Indiana plant, affecting around 700 workers — all these jobs, heading to Mexico without any repercussion.

Since the election, Trump has established a pattern of taking credit for saving or creating jobs that his deals had nothing to do with. For example, Trump took credit for a statement in a press release written by Toyota announcing that it is spending $1.3 billion at a Kentucky plant that will build its new Camry. “Toyota’s decision to invest $1.3 billion in their Kentucky plant is further evidence that manufacturers are now confident that the economic climate has greatly improved under my administration,” reads the Trump quote in the press release. But the company made clear that the news is not related to his administration. In fact, Toyota began preparing for manufacturing the new Camry during President Obama’s term.

And while Trump and Pence took credit for saving Carrier’s Indianapolis plant, current union chief Robert James told the Indianapolis Star that sentiments among the workers aren’t optimistic at all.

“They just don’t have any faith in this plant staying in Indianapolis,” James said. “There’s just too much uncertainty.”

In December, Chuck Jones, then-president of the United Steelworkers Local 1999 union that represents Carrier workers, gave multiple media interviews pushing back on Trump’s claim that the deal was a victory for workers. He said Trump “lied his ass off” when it came to saving 1,000 jobs and said the details surrounding the kind of deal Trump and Pence struck with Carrier were dubious. In a statement following the deal, Carrier announced that “the incentives offered by the state were an important consideration” to staying. The incentives, paid by Indiana taxpayers, amount to $7 million over a decade — $700,000 a year.

Trump is promising to reverse economic forces outside of any individual’s control. With automation accounting for 50 percent to 90 percent of job losses at American factories, cuts to low-skill manufacturing jobs will continue to be made, regardless of any “deals” struck up by people like the president. UTC has pledged to spend $16 million on plant upgrades, including automation. Job numbers reinforce Trump’s Carrier “deal” occurred amid a long-term downturn in manufacturing jobs in the country. Into 2017, manufacturing jobs have shown very little growth.

Meanwhile, Trump is highlighting products from companies still manufacturing in the United States during the White House’s “Made in America” week, because America sets the “world standard for quality and craftsmanship.” If American products set the “world standard,” then products made overseas, like the majority of the Trump Organization’s products, fail to meet that standard, despite Trump routinely touting them as the best.

MEXICO CITY, July 18 (Xinhua) — Mexico’s private sector said Tuesday it was ready to accompany the government delegation in the upcoming renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Talks on the two-decade deal between Mexico, the United States and Canada are to begin in August in a bid to address U.S. President Donald Trump’s concerns that the existing agreement harms U.S. industry and jobs.

The president of Mexico’s Business Coordinating Council (CCE), Juan Pablo Castanon, said in a statement that the various economic sectors have held more than 200 meetings since the beginning of the year to hammer out a unified strategy on each of the points to be debated.

“We have carried out extensive preparatory work with each sector of the economy … we are united and prepared,” said Castanon, whose organization gathers Mexico’s leading business and industrial chambers.

Business leaders have formed an intelligence group to support the negotiating team with information, analysis, potential scenarios and concrete positions, he said.

The CCE has also consulted with politicians and lawmakers, workers and academics, and industry observers, as well as establishing communication channels with its U.S. and Canadian counterparts, he added.

NAFTA should be renegotiated with the goal of increasing North America’s competitive edge and jobs market, while looking out for the interests of Mexico’s productive sectors, said Castanon.

“We firmly believe in our open (economic) model and we will strive to find means of integration that will continue to strengthen North America as the world’s most competitive region,” said Castanon.

Trump believes the U.S. economy has suffered factory closings and the loss of jobs since the treaty went into effect in 1994