Canada trade min Freeland: Very encouraged about US-Mexico NAFTA progress

Freeland upbeat

"We're hearing optimism from them," on NAFTA.

There's a big idea out there that Canada was 'excluded' from the US-Mexico talks recently. That's partly because Trump tried to make a big deal about it but there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what happened.

The US and Mexico were talking about autos. Canada's only position on autos was that the rules had to be uniform. Canada basically let the US do the negotiating on behalf of both for autos.

So there was no 'exclusion' of Canada and everyone close to the negotiations said that. So the US and Mexico closing in on a deal on autos is good for everyone. Now all three parties will get together and hammer out problems on dispute resolution and the sunset clause if they can.