U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer speaks at an event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington D.C., the United States, on May 1, 2018. Lighthizer said on Tuesday that he hoped to reach a deal to overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in mid-May, which could buy more time for the current Congress to approve the deal. (Xinhua/Yang Chenglin)
WASHINGTON, May 1 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer said on Tuesday that he hoped to reach a deal to overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in mid-May, which could buy more time for the current Congress to approve the deal.
Lighthizer is scheduled to meet representatives from Canada and Mexico in Washington to resume talks on NAFTA on May 7 after he returns from a trip to China.
"If we can get a good agreement, I'd like to get it done a week or two after that, if not, then you start to have a problem," Lighthizer said at an event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
"If we don't do that, then you're going to run out of the 200 and some days and you're probably voting next year with a different Congress. So it gets complicated," he said.
That's because it could take U.S. Congress months to draft the implementing legislation for the new NAFTA deal and approve it, according to the so-called Trade Promotion Authority law.
"I believe if we don't get it done in the next week or two, then we're on thin ice about whether it gets done before our election," Lighthizer said.
The United States will hold congressional midterm elections in November and a new Congress will take office in January 2019.
Lighthizer believed it's better to have a vote on NAFTA under the current Congress rather than the next Congress.
"The new congress will have some priorities and if they're substantially different, they're not going to be happy with whatever we do ... because it was negotiated with a lot of input from the previous Congress," he said, adding "I think there's just a sense that they'll try to open it up again."
Talks on renegotiating the NAFTA began in August 2017 as U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to withdraw from the 23-year-old trade deal. Following seven rounds of talks, the three countries remain divided over the rules of origin for autos and other issues.
