TORONTO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th December, 2019) Canada's deputy prime minister and the country's NAFTA renegotiation envoy, Chrystia Freeland, is on her way to Mexico City as US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA) negotiations appear to enter their final stages, according to her itinerary released on Tuesday.
"We have been working very intensively, including many conversations over the weekend and this morning with our American partners on getting the deal finalized," Freeland said during Question Period.
The Deputy Prime Minister's last-minute trip to Mexico suggests that significant headway has been made and comes on the heels of US President Donald Trump's comments to White House reporters, where he said that negotiations on the USMCA are going very well and expressed hope that the accord will be put to a vote in the near future.
The comments were superseded by a conversation between the president and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in which the two world leaders discussed the "progress towards ratification of the new North American Free Trade Agreement," a readout from the Prime Minister's office said.
In November, during a working visit to Ottawa, Mexico's chief negotiator Jesus Seade told reporters that most of the remaining sticking points in negotiations on the USMCA trade deal are between Mexico and the United States, and Canada is trying to narrow the gaps between the two sides.
Negotiators from the three countries are trying to agree to last-minute revisions to the USMCA that would allow the deal to be put up for a vote by Democrats in the US House of Representatives by the end of this year.
Also in November, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that additional negotiations with Mexico and Canada would be needed to revise the USMCA trade deal with tougher enforcement mechanisms, particularly regarding labor, environmental, and pharmaceutical issues.
So far, only Mexico has ratified the trade agreement.
