Trudeau says Canada wants to see ‘movement’ before signing revised NAFTA deal
WASHINGTON — Thirteen months is an “absolutely normal” time frame for a task as complex as modernizing North American trade, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said Wednesday as she notched another day on the road towards a new NAFTA deal with the United States and Mexico.
On a day where signs of progress were in the air, Freeland shrugged off talk of congressional deadlines and growing impatience in political circles as she justified the amount of time it has taken for all three sides to get to their current positions.
Rome, in other words, wasn’t built in a day.
“For an agreement of this scale, 13 months for a very deep modernization of the kind we’re working on is absolutely normal,” said Freeland, who will be back for more talks Thursday. “Trade agreements do take some time, both to negotiate and to update, because the economy is complicated and trade agreements are complicated.”