NAFTA is 1700 pages long when appendices are included. It is not free trade deal, it is managed trade. I see nothing wrong with reviewing these deals to make sure American workers are being treated fairly.
Have you actually read those pages?
I have - and it really is free trade. You can't simply appeal to length and then say "Therefore not free trade". So what are those pages?
First we have the baseline commitment - zero tariffs on all headings in the HTS. You then have a few small carve outs - like over-access quota amounts for supply managed goods coming into Canada (these quotas are Canada's version of agricultural subsidies - you can't expect them to go unless the US agrees to remove it's farm aid). There are also specific chapters dedicated to three highly sensitive types of goods - textiles, automobiles, and alcohol (the first two of which were there at specific US request - the last of which is there because each of the countries have byzantine and sub-federally managed liquor distribution, tax, and regulatory schemes).
But then you need mechanisms to prevent people from simply transshipping goods from outside jurisdictions (unless you're comfortable with saying goods shipped from China to Canada can then simply be repackaged and sent alone tariff free).
So you need rules of origin. For some of these things the matter is simple - cotton is NAFTA origin if it's picked in NA. Lumber is NAFTA origin if it's felled in NA.
Then it gets more complicated - take a table. It has several components (nails, glue, wood), but we recognize that it's the labour/craftsmanship that's important. So we'll say "when this becomes a chair, the location in which it becomes a chair is paramount".
In the case of that table, you can say that where a table is manufactured in NA (that is, it undergoes a "tariff class shift into the tariff class") it is now considered originating in NA. So you can have a table made of Brazilian lumber and Chinese nails but which still qualifies as originating (NOTE: I did not consult the HTS for this, I'm not sure if this is the proper rule for tables, this is an example to demonstrate tariff class shift rules).
But then you also have goods that are more complex than tables. For example, automobiles. They're made of many highly complex parts, with massive value add throughout the supply chain. So you don't want a simple tariff class shift to be the rule of origin - as that would encourage only the final welds being done in NA. The Parties didn't care
where in NA it happened, just that the major manufacturing happened here. So they come up with a Regional Value Content rule that requires a shift in tariff class
plus that the final product be made up of a certain NA value components (the usual rule is 60% by value
OR 50% by cost).
Now you have to do this for every single tariff subheading in the HTS. Go look at the HTS - that's thousands of pages. Even when you account for no need for 8-10 digit classification descriptions that's still a hefty chunk of the agreement.
And that's really the free trade in goods section. It's incredibly liberal, covers nearly all goods (with the exception of autos, textiles, alcohol, and certain very specific agricultural items). I'm happy to talk more about those - but it's hard to write off a major trade agreement as not free trade on the basis of those four areas.
So what's in the rest of the agreement? There's a chapter on trade in services. Not overly long and is fairly broad in application. It does create carve outs for professional services (because these typically require sub-federal regulatory approval which the countries weren't comfortable committing to - for example, US State Bars can't be dictated to by the Federal government, so a NAFTA commitment that they must allow Canadian lawyers to practice wouldn't really fly).
There are then a bunch of ancillary areas that countries, once again, traditionally regulate heavily domestically - telecommunications and financial services. If you have specific complaints on those, once again, happy to hear them. But usually these areas aren't overly contentious.
There are the investment protection rules (which aren't "trade" per se, but happy to talk about them if you think
they're the problem). There are also numerous pages dedicated to the dispute settlement provisions for when countries think a commitment isn't being upheld. There's also a very chapter with a
very long annex on rules for anti-dumping and countervailing duty appeals (which again, nothing to do with "managed trade" but create additional protections for NA producers from actions of the other NA governments).
Finally there are the exceptions chapter for services and investment. This, together with those four above, is the closest to "managed trade" you're likely to find. But these tend to fall into two camps - the obscure and the fundamental. An example of the first - laws providing protections for aboriginal peoples/US Tribes. An example of the second - laws enacted to protect national security (and ancillary, for example, air traffic control regulations)
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So I'm wondering - what elements of the above are you objecting to? Is it the four industries that have carve outs/protections? Is it the reservations taken at the end - and if so, what reservations in particular do you object to? Is it the rules of origin - and if so, how would you prevent, for example, Chinese goods from being transhipped if not with RoOs?
I'd really like to get down to specific of what you mean by "managed trade" and what elements you think are harmful/need amending. I'm really trying to engage here as this is an area that I think is both critical and very misunderstood.