U.S. makes good on promise to renegotiate NAFTA

By Around the Web

(Brandon Sun) The United States has officially served notice of its intention to renegotiate the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement, triggering a 90-day consultation window before talks begin later this summer with Canada and Mexico.

The Trump administration rang the opening bell Thursday with a letter to the key congressional power-brokers who must now be consulted as U.S. negotiators prepare their list of priorities.

The letter itself was mundane.

It cited the need to modernize a creaky old agreement, add new provisions relevant to the modern economy, and mentioned things already negotiated in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the deal abandoned by Donald Trump: digital trade flows, intellectual property, limits on state-owned enterprises.

It barely filled a single page and was drastically scaled back from the laundry list of complaints included in a draft version earlier this year. Some U.S. proponents of a hardball approach expressed disappointment.

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