[captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [indistinct conversations] scott just got the thumbs up. We will begin. Thank you for being here this morning. Welcome to csis. We appreciate you being here early monday morning for this event. My name is scott miller. Im a senior advisor. Three programs working cooperatively. Our program for prosperity and development and americas program. For those of you online, we welcome you. If youre interested in the rebroadcast of this event, it will be posted on the event page immediately following the program. To any of you who follow this, we are delighted you came and invest your time thank you for doing that. We have a excellent lineup today to talk about a subject we hope will provide context. Our programs are doing that on a regular basis. A trade website, for continuing coverage. To get things started, director of the Mexico Program richard miles. Richard. Richard thank you. I am the director of the u. S. To mexico futures initiative. You may wonder, we will have people talking about a possible nafta doomsday scenario. It should it is the Job Description to see the big picture, the whole relationship. We want to look beyond trade and examine what could happen in the issues and all with these bilateral relationships for one of the parties of nafta. We will probably hear about things like Security Cooperation with mexico, about defense cooperation with canada, cooperation with both companies both countries on issues like venezuela and haiti, global issues, and most importantly, canada and mexico are our neighbors. The people to people relationships angle that ambassadors care a lot about, cultural and educational ties, and things like education. To start things off, we will have another ambassador set the stage. Carla hill is one of those people in washington who needs no introduction but i will give one for her anyway. Born in los angeles, attended oxford and started her career as assistant u. S. Attorney in los angeles, and the Civil Rights Division in the department of justice, and during the ford administration, she was the secretary of health and she was u. S. Trade representative to which time she led negotiations for the north American Free trade agreement. It would be hard to find a better person to speak about what nafta has achieved and what the world could look like without it. Please join me in welcoming ambassador carla hill. [applause] thank you. We have got a great panel so i will be brief. I think in starting to think about what we lose from a pullout of nafta, we ought to remember what does the agreement do for us . Let me briefly say it brought together 490 Million Consumers and created a 19 trillion market. It eliminated tariffs on all industrial goods and most agricultural goods except for a few. It opened a broad range of Services IncludingFinancial Service is an provided treatment for Service Providers across lines. It removed significant Investment Barriers and provided protection for north american investors and provided enforceable protection for trademarks and copyright, which have become more important in the 20 years since. As a result, our commercial relationships throughout north america expanded, making this region the most competitive in the world. Today, canada and mexico account for one third of our global trade but we are not to talk about trade or what happens if it shrinks. Actually i want to also mention , that canada is our largest exporter destination. And mexico is our second largest. The number and vibrancy of these commercial relationships has created great bonds, people to people and government to government paying dividends in areas way beyond trade. For example visitors from canada , and mexico constitute the top two sources, a major industry for the United States. The top two sources of tourism. In 2015, 1. 5 trillion to our economy. Today, one out of nine jobs are hinged to tourism. It has already occurred in this year. As a result of concerns about the breakdown in our regional relationship. Another cause for withdrawal is the in crease in investment. Our nafta partners have invested 280 billion in the United States and the uncertainty created by the threat of our walking away from the agreement after 24 years, without question, will reduce interest in investment and jobs connected to investment. And not just from northern and southern neighbors. Much more broadly. Uncertainty with respect to the future action also affects job creation. Think of it. In 1993, our jobs connected to mexico total 700,000. Today, as a result of nafta, it is 5 million. Exiting from nafta would obviously shrink the number significantly. You take the auto sector. We would lose jobs if we break up our highly synchronized supply chain that makes our auto chain the most competitive globally. Our companies would see costs increase and that would adversely affect their Global Competitiveness and the result is a decrease in our sales, which would mean fewer jobs. Some companies are predicted to relocate to asia, which would again adversely affect jobs. Or take the agricultural sector. We have got 10 states that are keenly related to what they produce in agricultural markets. The tariffs and the food sector, are above 30 . So the states would truly feel that pinch. In addition to the harm done in that regional relationship, we would suffer challenges maintaining security. In the past two decades, our three governments have worked together to handle the increased flow of trade trying to separate those items that would create a danger so they could focus on facilitating the items for which there is no concern. Today, we share intelligence and collaborate on confronting challenges to International Crime to various areas of organized crime, creating a stronger border requires attention and action on both sides of the border. Pulling out of nafta nafta would most assuredly erode partnerships in dealing with a broad range of security issues. Finally, i have no doubt an exit in nafta would result in serious leadership erosion for our government. Not only with our two neighbors but throughout the hemisphere and beyond. To turn our back on an important agreement with our neighbors, over concern about bilateral deficits raises questions with respect to our reliability and our leadership. What other government would want to sit down and negotiate on any topic . A concern would loom that we could not be relied upon to deliver tomorrow what we promise today. We have a great panel to talk about it in greater detail, the cost and consequences of exiting from nafta. I will exit the podium and turn it over to our great panel. I thank you for being here. [applause] good morning, everybody. Im a senior fellow here at csis. I will be moderating this panel. What a treat to have three former ambassadors here. Today, Earl Anthony Wayne is a former u. S. Ambassador to mexico from 2011 to 2015. The former mexican ambassador to the United States from 20072013. And michael wilson, a former canadian ambassador 20162009. We can talk about trade as well. I would like to start with, putting this topic more on the level of a regular citizen. How do you think regular citizens would be affected by an exit of nafta. What do you tell a regular joe how does that impact them . The basic message is that things would cost more. The winter vegetables you get from mexico would probably cost a bit more. We do not know. Daytoday, that would be the place where people note things. We will talk about this a little bit more, we see a reduction in security operation in fighting crime. That is already a serious problem that both sides are working together now very collaboratively. I think cooperation would be negatively impacted the u. S. Were to exit nafta. Good morning and thank you for having us this morning. This is an important week, the socalled intersessional meeting before round six in canada at the beginning of next year kicks off. We will be seeing a lot of discussions on hot button issues, some of these issues in the conversation. One thing i would add to the list of how it impacts daily lives of americans is cost if the u. S. Were to impose some of the issues it would like to impose on the automotive sector, there will be a very important impact on the price of automobiles manufactured in north america. At the end of the day, it is a hard question. A campaign not on Public Policy debate discussions but on narrative and storytelling. How do you transform that data despite that we seem to live in a factory washington these days. How do you translate all of these numbers and all of this data into something that connects with americans . One way i think that helps is to underscore there is no bilateral relationship on the earth that touches the daily lives of so Many Americans in their relationships with mexico. Its the avocados that you buy, but it is also what happens with scarce resources on the border, and what has been done on collaboration but there is a compelling story to be told that how do we create storytelling that will connect with your average joe to underscore how important this is . One of my hoax is that, given that one of the sectors that would be severely hurt by the denunciation of nafta is the bag sector, which will provide a real pinch in states that elected President Trump. Profoundly red states, agricultural states that would , lose significantly if this disappears. We can go into some of the specifics of all of this, which im sure we will do this in the panel, but at the end of the day, the challenge we have as former officials and think tanks and policymakers is how do we create a narrative which connects to the average citizens in canada, mexico and the United States as to what the impact of nafta going south, pun intended, would entail for security and wellbeing of north americans . A lot has been said and ill try not to repeat it. Agriculture, cars, and textiles, these are the three sectors that would be most severely affected and they are with the average joe or jane will feel quite directly. A little bit less directly, there is an uncertainty as to what will happen if we have no nafta and there is nothing to replace it with. That will in fact that will affect investment, and investment affects jobs. So there will clearly be an indirect effect on jobs. If all of this happens the way we have been discussing, i would be concerned about an antiamerican sense in mexico and canada that will be damaging for the relationship among all of our countries. We just dont need that. I think it is something we have to be concerned about. The final point i will make is 35 states, have as the number one export destination is canada. I think there is a number that other states with mexico and the number two in both cases is usually mexico or canada. It is not just here in washington. It will be felt through the United States, those negative impacts of three of us talked about. Thank you very much. I would like to focus on security aspects. The three countries have cooperated on border issues and drugs and illegal immigration, how would exiting impact those areas, drugs, immigration, especially from Central American countries, and potential terrorist threats . Those are key issues that citizens care about. A good place to start is precisely where mike left off , which is that it leads in a lot of these issues. Which is perceptions. You do not need to be kissinger to figure out why a country where positive favorable perception of United States has collapsed the most is mexico. It went from 66 to 33 in a year. People may say, how does that impact the relationship . When you have that impact in mexico in less than eight months and you see what mexicans are being told and asked, there is a key question i would like to put next to this collapse which is you ask mexican citizens whether the administration is dealing adequately with the Trump Administration, the overwhelming majority, 63 or 62 , say that the Mexican Government is not responding adequately to u. S. Administration. Imagine what the negative perceptions and this poll tell you about the ability the Mexican Government has to do stuff with the United States . As mexico heads into the cycle of next year, then it impacts everything in terms of it has a profound impact on security collaboration, something tony and i worked on hand in hand when he was in mexico city and i was in washington, d. C. And there is already a challenge because this is not the forum to discuss whether we agree or not, but as the u. S. Has moved in a de facto legalization, many in cannabis,ation of many in mexico are increasingly saying why should mexico be investing blood sweat and tears in eradicating marijuana if nine states in the United States have legalized cannabis for Recreational Use . There is already a relevant tension and to this, you add u. S. Administration that decides to invoke article 2205, it will have a profound impact on how mexico has articulated a number of policies, whether it is regional, bilateral, or hemispheric level. It is not that mexico will necessarily become an antiamerican country. It is simply the ability to do stuff that we have been doing for the past decade and a half on issues like security would go out the window. I will give you a prescient example, given now that immigration was one of the third rails of the gop primary and has played such an Important Role in these months and we have a decision over what happened with the dreamers in daca. When the famous gang of eight bill was being developed on capitol hill, which was later approved in the senate and failed in the house, some of the followed it closely. There was a debate on what was called a touchback clause, what you do with 11 million undocumented immigrants who were in the United States to legally be in the United States. There was a discussion on capitol hill as to how you would make these 11 Million People leave the country and then come back legally to then start whatever process of immigration and legalization was put on the table for them. Mexico at the time told congress, one thing is mexicans or Central Americans were relatively close. If you are from india or china or poland, and you go back and then come in, it is a bit of a challenge. Mexico said, we would be want to 11 millionto take in people if you could process them in mexican consulates, and then that way we could help ensure that those individuals in the country without papers could come back in with a legal status so we can get that off the table. That debate which was happening 2009, today in the current circumstances despite how important it would be to what weve the needle forward, it is off the table. It would be political suicide for anyone in mexico today to put that on the table. That is an example of how this use of mexico as a pinata added to the potential of nafta going down the drain because of unilateral denunciation, how this could impact a lot of what we do together on narcotics on regional security, on challenges we are facing in the caribbean and south america, where we had been working hand in hand. To finish on that one and then maybe talk about canada, it is important to remember that in the 1980s, the United States and mexico were called distant neighbors. They really did not cooperate on much. There were friendships but there was not a cooperation on the governments. After nafta, what happened of the subsequent 25 years is gradually, let me underscore gradually, we developed more mutual trust and Mutual Understanding and started expanding the area where we were able to cooperate. It started in the trade and then the financial area. We wrote a paper about it in the Foreign Policy area, how long it took. It took through the first decade of the 2000s and then beyond to get us to the point where we were willing to collaborate around the world and other places. The same is true in the security area. There just was not mutual trust or understanding in agencies. They would Work Together on cases that it was limited. Same thing on the border. Up until a few years ago, people were still shouting at each other across the border and pointing fingers and they moved to a shared paradigm of shared responsibilities. We share the responsibility for solving these really difficult problems. Neither of us could do it ourselves. In the Law Enforcement security area, starting in 2008 and moving forward increasingly every year that it was better collaboration. They did not solve all problems but they found new ways to address the problems that were more effective. A lot of it is endangered by what arturo was talking about, the Public Attitudes in both countries, but also in mexico where you do not have the space to take the steps forward and your own Law Enforcement people will be less trustworthy because of what they perceive to be clear insults not against criminals but against mexico in , general and the mexican people in general. And so the big danger here is we will see big steps afterward. Significant steps backward. The worst part of it to me is the young mexicans who grew up in nafta and came to see real values in the United States that they admired are now changing their opinions. That is evident in the overall p