WASHINGTON \u2014 American, Canadian and Mexican negotiators are pledging to work quickly to update the North American Free Trade Agreement, a 23-year-old pact that President Donald Trump has called the worst trade deal in history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first round of NAFTA renegotiations talks were wrapped up Sunday. The three countries said they planned to meet again in Mexico Sept. 1-5, in Canada late next month and back in the United States in October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They did not offer details on the five-day talks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The negotiations are likely to prove contentious. U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer declared Wednesday that the United States \u201cis not interested in a mere tweaking\u201d of NAFTA and will seek an ambitious rewrite of a deal the Trump administration blames for hundreds of thousands of lost U.S. factory jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NAFTA did away with most barriers, including tariffs, on trade between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump and other NAFTA critics say the agreement encouraged manufacturers to move south of the border to take advantage of lower-wage Mexican labor. Lighthizer said the U.S. wants a revamped agreement to do more to ensure that products are made in the NAFTA trade bloc and specifically in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Canadian and Mexican negotiators agree that NAFTA needs to be updated, but they have defended it as an economic success story for expanding trade between the three countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said at the start of the Washington talks that he hoped differences could be narrowed in the next round of negotiations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
American, Canadian and Mexican negotiators are pledging to work quickly to update the North American Free Trade Agreement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":38121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":12,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[106,12,31,33],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1871],"class_list":["post-13295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-brief","category-govcon","category-home","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"PTQYSVAYCVCBXJ7SAEVDRUU2PY","arc_canonical_url":"\/govcon\/2017\/08\/21\/us-canada-mexico-pledge-quick-work-to-update-nafta\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n