President george bush on december 17 of 1992 and approved by congress november 10 of 1994. Excuse me 1993. Nafta significant is because it was the most comp presentsive Free Trade Agreement negotiated at the time and contained several Ground Breaking prognoses. The new generation of Free Trade Agreement and also served as a template for certain provisions in multilateral trade negotiations as part this Year Congress will decide on what legislation to consider and to amend on the current nafta. There the will also consider the ramification offices negotiate organize withdrawing from na to how it will effect in the u. S. Economy and Foreign Relations with mexico and canada. Some contend that will draw from the tpp could damage u. S. Economic leadership and other say it as a way to prevent potential job losses key provisions from the tpp may be addressed in moderrizing or renegotiating the nafta. Which is at this point more than two decades old. Some proponents contain that maintaining nafta or deepening economic relations with canada and mexico with he help promote common trade agenda with shared values and generate Economic Growth and opponents of the treaty argue the agreement has cost worker displacement. We are luck you have a such a distinguished panel here today. Senior fellow at the director of the initiative and the Americas Program at csi s. Over 20 years of experience and an Intelligence Officer with the u. S. Army for the u. S. Embassy, barbados, germany and iraq and also the representative of the United States and the western hemisphere adviser to the under secretary for political affairs. Senior Research Professor keister directed research at the Automotive Industry and a member of the Advisory Board of the Mcdonald Institute and Law Institute as well as commentator in regards to bilateral trade issues. To start off todays conversation, would you like to comment on how much congressional oversight there has been so far and whether the role so far in the negotiations . Thank you for hosting this event it is a great pleasure to be here. The topic being held as Congress Deal with a lot of the coverage is about executive branch actions. They start to think about the endgame, the United States federal government has limited and enumerated powers and is in article one of the constitution that can be dealing with congress, so congress has the power to regulate the trade Promotion Authority but as a delegation of authority from the congress to the executive branch to do the work of negotiating the treaty. It requires a bill passed by both houses of congress so the endgame always deals with congress and because you are considering the congress the endgame is mostly some form of politics it can garner the support of the members so that is the endgame and its important to think about. With the promise to renegotiate wasnt a compelling coalition in support of that and so you will recall when the president decided to launch and notify the congress most of the comments everyone was quoting the hippocratic oath please do no harm so there was a lot of resistance initially. The second element is the republican house, senate and the president there are things they want to do together and things where they disagree into their spin a tendency early on to focus on things that they want to work on together specifically tax reform. Its somewhat controversial. So now you are beginning to see heryou here february, 2018 you e beginning to see the hearings happening this week as the committee met with the ambassador and members of the republican side they had a meeting in the white house on trade. Its been slow coming for those of us wante who wanted to see it sooner. Scott did a great job of the Constitutional Responsibilities of oversight. It started late and picked up speed in late summer and early fall. Talking about billions of dollars and beat an feet and lof different products if they were to go away. You can connect the dots and have the Committee Process oversight and state governors calling the white house or calling congress saying if it goes away if we get into the trade for my state is going to be hurt badly and we will lose the seat in the state and sena senate. Until last march when everyone thought the United States was about to end this with drawing and useful connectivity by the chamber of commerce and trade associations and individual states. They got in the act and realiz realized. They visited every state in the union. Theyve done a fantastic job. Theyve played a little bit of catchup that they have done that as well. You were the one who inspired the panel and i think you ask the righaskedthe right question. I want to echo with scott miller and richard said as well for people that remember the trade policy history when they went to congress and asked for trade Promotion Authority, he was met by some bewilderment. What they wrote which became the bipartisan trade promotion and accountability act on the administration with so many conditions in strict deadlines that we have seen since 1974 that set up this fasttrack process Congress Gave itself a bigger role because it wasnt sure where the negotiations were going to go in when they became president there was the question and the authority granted to the administration was Still Available to him and i think he felt he wouldnt get any more leeway than congress have given obama. You might think this is all inside based and it is to a degree. Theyve been faithful to their terms had announced things when they were supposed to announce them. I think what that reveals his seriousness about getting a deal and about congresss role. I think a surprise to many of us the issues Congress Cares about effect a number of states from georgia to washington and oreg oregon. Weve seen concerns a little bit about the auto industry. Theyve been proactive in trying to engage talking to state statt someone but whats been interesting also is the politics there is always an accusation we have to fix it peace partners of ours are cheating at the beginning. It was going to carry on to the extent that it could. Weve seen the case become quite contentious and go to the states some of you will remember the dispute the political dynamic started to shift into some started to ask why is he just beating us up all the time. They had to push back and they saw this weeks ago which is a challenge to the way the u. S. Calculates penalties. Specifically it deals with trade remedy practice that goes back to 74 before the United States. This is going to be a tricky aspect Going Forward but because it is a broader challenge. To try to step forward and defend the u. S. Industry its fascinating to me canada chose to challenge the u. S. Trade law at the time that its so important. Its a challenge to the way they pretend these walls so they are on both sides of this asking congress to do better. Its going to affect the negotiations that are ongoing themselves. Anyone . Will have to emerge. Some group of industries and parties are going to have to take a look at the negotiations and to decide what they think about them in terms of the effect of their businesses and states and whatever the market may be. They begin to band together to form a set of coalitions that will be actively supportive of the congress. If you want to pass a bill in the house and the senate you have to do this work it off didnt it emerges after the negotiation starts, so the fact it hasnt shown up now is not a surprise. It supported the trade with korea so what has not emerged yet as a coalition in support of anything in particular in the United States. There is now a coalition to not screw up enough to. For 20 or so years, businesses and groups and firms across north america ddelta with it as a favor complete as they set up rules. Nafta wasnt perfect when it started and it isnt today but we thought it was stable enough. Usurp the customers based on that set of rules so a friend of mine works with the farm bureau into those international affairs, very important completion. So i asked what do they think about nafta. There wasnt a tab on the website of the farm bureau federation. Now that problem has been solved so we have the coalition that hasnt materialized. They are making their voices known. There is no idea of what the final product might look like to garner the majority in the congress so that is the mystery why its been difficult to predict the duration of the talks include the potential andl and the state might look like so we are behind the curve. Not really because anybody ever asked for this. When it started last august will the trade representatives do their job and by the time you go to november or early december with three or four rounds by then, the mood in washington was dark and pessimistic because one of them had gone badly. The senior level peoplat the seh very good access were betting that we were going to walk which is sobering to hear that. I think the feedback has subsided in the past if therese is now a general consensus that around while it didnt necessarily move the ball forward it also didnt collapse into the expectation they may show a little bit of flexibility on for things like the rule of origin but id heard that from a couple of people. The worst Case Scenario now is the negotiations after the round baby just go into dormancy until the end of 2018. So in that pessimistic period there is a lot of talk of how congress can block the administration. What was the governing trade a act, what lawsuits could be filed, it wouldve talked about the mechanisms to stop the administration but you dont hear that anymore and i think that reflects the United States isnt going to walk away from this unilaterally there will be some other solution that kicks in. There is almost no governing l law. Something remarkable to me hearing from both of you. Nobody wanted to be out front defending it. Donald trump and his campaign helped to bring the voices of the critics we have been ignoring a lot of people didnt like that for a variety of reasons. But its not the Business Community and beneficiaries of nafta back into the public square. So talking about how they affect their job. To have them come forward i think has been a nice side effect having taken this on board has decided they are open to changing it. Donald trump captured the sense of nafta wasnt good but there isnt an agenda and theres a tremendous amount of flexibility. If he can come up with an agreement to satisfy the community and say its a good deal or its a better deal, fantastic deal, then i think he will be able to celebrate and if we are able to move forward with a broad base of support in the idea i think there will be a net benefit even if it comes with donald trump driving the car its good we are engaged on th that. He saw this on tax reform. I am really working and going back. Say we like this deal we are going to invest more its going to make congress feel much more comfortable in the 2018 which it still could do. The issue has been used as an electoral issue and its very complex and difficult to understand and summarize. How do you think that the privatization of. Trade politics were amazingly stable as an outstanding book. Its called classical for commerce and the history of the policy and one of the points that doug erwin makes is that they are unstable for about a hundred years up until about 1980. If you go back and want to know where the industrial midwest was, in northwest ohio today to make automobiles in marysville big automobiles in marysville up the way from marysville and 18 a. D. It was the producer of steam locomotives much like in the wheat belt people grew crops in the Financial Services they were very important to trade in the beginning so there was a political geography so every trade agreement was essentially bipartisan and geographically specific so you are a senator from new york it doesnt matter whether democrats, Patrick Moynihan or democrat, trade was good for new york likewise South Carolina you have Strom Thurmond and senators from South Carolina because of the concentration of the payroll in the state of South Carolina. Now that all changed in three important ways. What happened is because of the information revolution all of a sudden the communication costs longdistance phone call new york to los angeles a dollar a minute. Anybody with a third of the 1990 those that calls wha the calls y for longdistance today at the cost of electricity so this changed the way that you communicate and coordinate attacks and allow International Spread so they need to plan transfers so that is a fundamental change. What that does is cost trade to the benefits and cost to be a oa much more micro level. It is no longer tied to geography is no longer a textile state. At the same time you throw company with headquarters in the South Carolina and likewise you also have bmw and volvo in South Carolina and now tim scott has a different view of how the politics of trade work in his state and his predecessor Strom Thurmond because of this change. Its more confusing it harder to figure out so it is a matter of political competitiveness and they never hold the majority between 1954 and 1994. There was political stability. We dont have that anymore. Likewise we have a bunch of leaders didnt like the senate and decided to turn it into the house so we now have these tribal bodies of the legislature which is webbased politics of everything including trade. And this is the one almost nobody mentions where the party bases are in different places for democrats if the Labor Movement and the Environmental Movement, democratic voters more urban and they support trade, likewise elicited the chamber of commerce the more rural an and d are youolder your voters are the skeptical you are of trade so both parties are disconnected and combined first the weaponize politics into second, Technology Costs globalization to affect firms at a finer level and the party base. I cant really add to whats nafta has done politically. Nafta is a greater political symbosymbolpoliticalsymbols in r has been in the United States as a reason for that it was the same year they entered the treaty so this might all of a sudden mexico joined the Global Economy and it really started skyrocketing after 1994 and you can see that its obvious for anyone to new mexico before and after so what that means is it is their ticket into the industrialized world its not just a trade agreement with political weight and significance of being in the ranks and thats why its interesting they are in a Campaign Season and they are very strict so they are not campaigning but its not a controversial subject used as a weapon and a full. Hes done a favor in terms of its perception in mexico. They would see a gratifying of thit ratified thecountry is qui. If it hadnt been split between the Democratic Party and the federal liberals you might well have seen the election go the other way and rejected with so much fear that this agreement was going to transform the economy in a way that was americanized it. The fact that that didnt happen and then everyone was afraid the border was going to be erased and yet they grew more prosperous if the standards of living rose to sew this up for the openness and free trade, he had been a freetrade skeptic and seemed to be coming around before he retired the only of trade itself and openness also has been talking abou about a Progressive Agenda to advance inclusion for the Indigenous Peoples and others so its changed the politics of trade for canada. I want to pick up something raised which is one of the more interesting stories we havent begun to debate. That is something that they have shown in the generational gap over trade and many people who were bab baby boomers in their s and 50s when nafta came in they vote thei felt their econoc prospects didnt improve and many of them ended up feeling this way i and they voted for donald trump. They are much more cosmopolitan lowering the communication was much more fluid so because of that they tend to see openness has a value not only in the classroom but their lives as being a normal thing so the trick is you have a critique that is coming from an older generation but the people that you are building this for is the millennial generation. You need to build an agreement because the personnel losing their 60s and 70s retired they want a better life for their kids so can we come up with a nafta to plato that goes back to the old debate certainly when you hear the rhetoric that is what you hear is a net positive that sets the table for Economic Growth to provide opportunities i think if we can get to the latter you will see congress get on board because it not only makes the young voters happy that the older voters. Mexico and canada have been trying to ask about the negotiations negotiating security and Environmental Issues into the social issues tha