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A NAFTA skeptic Finds Trump's Initial Goals for Rengotiating the Trade Deal 'Vague Generalities'

Ryan says the lies about Russia are distracting from the nation's business.
Tim Rudell
/
WKSU
Ryan says the lies about Russia are distracting from the nation's business.
Ryan says the lies about Russia are distracting from the nation's business.
Credit Tim Rudell / WKSU
/
WKSU
Congressman Tim Ryan says the 2015 law on trade deals requires the administration to lay out specific objectives, which Trump hasn't done.

At least one Ohio Democrat is skeptical of President Trump’s outline of how he wants to renegotiate NAFTA.  

Congressman Tim Ryan – a Youngstown-area Democrat -- also been pushing for improvements to the North American Free Trade Agreement. But he says 25 years of trade has cemented complex supply and other relationships, and that’s why he wanted to see details on what the Trump administration hopes to accomplish. So far, he says, all he’s seen are vague generalities.

“Those get hard to undo over all that time because of money and investments that have been made. So it gets very difficult to undo some of this stuff. But clearly he doesn’t have any proposal to fix NAFTA or get the economy moving.”

Ryan says he had hoped to see a balance of labor, wage, and environmental standards among the administration’s priorities.

Last week, Ryan and other House Democrats sent a letter with their priorities for NAFTA talks to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. Click here to read the letter.

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M.L. Schultze
M.L. Schultze came to WKSU as news director in July 2007 after 25 years at The Repository in Canton, where she was managing editor for nearly a decade. She’s now the digital editor and an award-winning reporter and analyst who has appeared on NPR, Here and Now and the TakeAway, as well as being a regular panelist on Ideas, the WVIZ public television's reporter roundtable.