watch landmark cases, live monday at 9:00 eastern on c-span, c-span.org, or listen with the free c-span radio app. for background on each case, order your copy of the companion book. explore the interactive constitution created by the national constitution center. there is a link on our website. next, a look at nafta and national security implications for the u.s.. speakers include the nebraska senator and for -- and to former diplomats. posted by the heritage foundation, this is an hour and a half. >> good afternoon. welcome to the heritage

foundation's auditorium. we welcome those who join us on our website and those joining us on c-span. for those in-house, we ask the courtesy that mobile devices have been silenced. it is appreciated. for those watching online, you're welcome to send questions or comments at any time by emailing speaker@heritage.org and we will of course post today's program on the heritage homepage for everyone's future reference. leading the discussion following our special opening remarks will be david shedd, who serves as a -- as existing fellow in our davis institute for national security and foreign policy. welcoming on behalf of heritage and welcoming and introducing senator will be kim holmes. dr. holmes serves as our executive vice president. please join in welcoming him. [applause] >> good afternoon, everyone.

it's a pleasure to welcome you to the heritage foundation. this is the second time i've been at this podium this morning. we welcome the president of georgia here for a two-hour discussion and he gave a speech from here, but it is certainly an honor to welcome you, senator, to the heritage foundation. we have a long history certainly from the work when i was back in as an analyst and vice president for foreign-policy back in the 1990's, trying to get nafta approved, working with conservatives, the republican party. david shedd, negroponte were of course very much involved in that and were so please have all of you here as well, but before i introduce our guest speaker, i'd like to start with a couple of facts. going into its 24th year, the north american free trade agreement has been in our humble opinion a success story. overall, nafta trade agreements

between the three countries, the united states, canada and mexico, has increased from $290 billion in 1993, the trade that is between these three countries, $290 billion in 1993, to more than $1 trillion in 2016. u.s. manufactured goods exports to canada and mexico export more -- exports support more than 2 million american jobs. mexico and canada are the first and second largest importers of american agricultural goods. often ignored in the nafta success story are the national security benefits of this agreement, which you will be hearing more about in the panel discussion and survey from senator sasse. as joint economic security between both countries expanded as a result of the nafta agreement, american cooperation with mexican law enforcement to combat organized crime, to identify counterterrorism, opportunities and to address illegal immigration has also

reached unprecedented levels. yet, after seven rounds of contentious negotiations, the future of nafta is uncertain. nafta could be certainly improved. i think almost everyone agrees with that, but it also has resulted in many positive impacts on the american economy, on american national security, and just yesterday the heritage foundation published a new research paper exploring all these linkages. today, our distinguished fellow david shedd will lead a panel discussion with noted u.s. national security experts who have served in the highest levels of government to discuss the implications of withdrawing from nafta. but first, i am honored to welcome ben sasse of nebraska, who will deliver a keynote address on why a strong nafta would boost not only free trade but also the national security interest of the united states.

trade issues are the top priority for senator sasse and look forward to hearing your thoughts. senator ben sasse represents the great state of nebraska. we were having a chat about walking beans and doing various things which i dare not talk about because i don't fully understand what he was talking about, but he's a fifth-generation nebraskan . he comes to the senate having spent the previous five years as a college president. when he was recruited to take over the midland university, he was just 37, making him one of the youngest college presidents in the nation. the 130-year-old lutheran college was on the verge of bankruptcy when he arrived but it became instead one of the fastest-growing higher education institutions in the country. most of his career has been spent guiding companies and institutions through times of crisis, and he does so with straight talk and with strong determination. he has worked with the boston consulting group on mckinsey and company as well as private

equity firms and not-for-profit organizations to tackle some of the failing strategies across a broad array of sectors and nations. so please join me in welcoming senator sasse. [applause] sen. sasse: thank you for having me. kim did tell me even though originally i only had 15 or 20 minutes to a kickoff is present -- to kick off this panel, he said if i would give details on agriculture and particularly d -- and particularly corn and walking beans i could have an extra hour. [laughter] sen. sasse: so you all will be privileged to get into some serious agricultural stuff. he also his complement the my boots which i appreciate it and ask what's up with that. he did realize that nebraska's

largest beef state in the uniion. he didn't want to ask technical questions about beef versus canada weather not texans in the room would be offended of my claims. we will do a little bit of parsing about you go from a cow -- you might ignore -- give me an extra hour of bonus time as well. you have really distinguished panel and there are whole bunch of technical things you're going to learn from them and that i am looking wardto learn from them as well. i'm not going to try to compete with that. our whole bunch of aspects to the way we do counterintelligence, for security and we do drug interdiction and we do human trafficking partnerships or anti-human trafficking partnerships with mexico that i think you'll hear unpacked by a really distinguished panel this afternoon. i won't speculate on that and the implications of the timing and the unfolding of nafta negotiations for the mexican election, but i would just like -- that's a significant thing that i don't think has been covered in the u.s. media , accounts of what is happening in nafta as well. so there's a lot to be discuss this afternoon. i'm going to limit myself to

setting the background for some of this discussion and with limited time i'm going to give you something more approaching elliptical as the kickoff for my talk and then i will unpack it and just a little more detail. about like that i would like to offer six species for your consideration. the first is that when we discussed trade partnerships across the globe but especially in north america, when we discuss trade the american people right now regularly jump to job change and job disruption, and there's a basic true fact that we still have in common that we don't all have in common, which is that technology, not trade, is overwhelmingly the primary driver of job change in job -- job change and job disruption in america. that is technology, not trade, is the overwhelming driver of job description -- job

disruption in america today. number two, it looks the effects of trade just from economic standpoint, we will get to national security implications of trade as well today, but if you look at trade just as an economic matter it is being indisputably good for the u.s. throughout history. this is an academic theory. this is historical reality, and nafta in particular has been indisputably good for the u.s. it's also being indisputably good for mexico and it's also being indisputably good for canada. there's nothing internally inconsistent about those statements because trade done right is a win-win. regularly in our public discourse, we don't talk about that clearly, so i think it's useful to unpack a little bit when you look at the economic ledger how to think about the consumer benefits of trade, the producer benefits of trade and then in reverse if you look at more tariffs or more protection the consumer costs to trade, the producer costs of trade and then the retaliatory synergistic effects where you get costs

again on consumers and producers as you cascade from one kind of protectionism to other types of protectionism. my second pieces -- my second sis is -- my second the that trade is indisputably good as an economic matter. number three, we have very little public understanding of what the term trade deficit means and not understand what a trade deficit is has huge negative consequences for our public deliberation about trade. we should talk a tiny little bit about what the word, the term trade deficit means and really we should fight hard and i think for those of us who work in public life for a time for those who are in the academic or the think tank world or those he and -- or those in the journalistic community, i think we should stop whenever someone says trade deficit and say, when you say trade deficit, you really just mean trade product deficit. i assume you do that if we will talk about that come then let's

make sure also to back to the trade services surplus and the foreign direct investment surplus that the u.s. almost always has whenever we talk about a bilateral trade product deficit. so number three, the term trade deficit is not well understood and we can't deliberate well as a people about trade without unpacking a bit about what we think we're saying when we say trade deficit. number four, the american people are not to blame for this confusion. this is overwhelmingly the fault of leaders do not talk clearly about where we are in economic history. and unless we go slower and with -- and unpack unpack where we are in economic history, there is going to be so much anxiety about job turn and change understandably that people will look for bogeyman. right now trade is suffering a lot of the bogeyman negative consequences of us not deliberating clearly about where we are and economic history. we're going to a time of radical change. the technological and in particular digital revolution we

are living through may well 100 years from now look in the rearview mirror as disruptive not just to economics but the basic human community as industrialization and urbanization. if we are going through that kind of a revolution, we should have some sense of what we are living through so that we as a people can deliberate about it clearly. this town is failing radically to have any meaningful discussion about where we are in economic history and so a lot of what feels like washington breaking down is washington breaking down at the basic level of policy deliberation, but more fundamentally, it is washington not having done the first thing of leading to help the american people have a big broad conversation about what we think, what sort of problems are amenable to political solutions, and what sort of problems are probably not amenable to political solutions. when we unpack that, what i would say is we're going to a time of such radical social

capital, radical and rapid, that most people feel such hollowness in our lives and as people who are to be relational beings, people were meant to be tribal beings, if are tribes are evaporating, we are still going to try to figure out a way to create tribes in a really lame way is by doing anti-tribes but that is what is happening all around us. people are saying i don't have a lot of tribes but maybe i can at least have the enemy of my enemy be my friend for time and we can be shared. there's a whole bunch of that going on with you some of the reasons washington doesn't look like it makes much progress on pragmatic small ball legislative policymaking because there's not a broader shared understanding of where we are in history. number five, this is more than the mcdonald's thesis of sam huntington and other people, but number five i would say that when you have lots of economic relationship between two countries or between a block of

countries, when you have a lot of commerce between peoples, you wind up building other relationships as well, which often has huge global security implications. this isn't that profound. it turns out that you are less likely to go to war with people that you know and like and have shared interests with. there is nothing profound about this, but when we talk about trade and isolate it from global security and national security considerations, we pretending that people are just disembodied rational robots, sort of calculators, making decisions about what their interests are in the world as if they are not embodied people that have economic interests in communities and relationships and friends. it turns out when you have a lot more economic relationship, you're much more likely to find shared understanding about global security matters, both for the good building alliances but also for the avoidance of the bad, misunderstandings to be dealt with better if you have

lots of overlapping relationships to take it from the literature about family breakdown that is out there right now. it turns out people who have to practice marriage in the context of community are better at marriage the people of practice marriage without a lot of relationships densely packed around them. if you have a bunch of little bumps in your marriage petition lots of common friends and your family members and you have neighbors, it turns out you can solve lots of problems that might otherwise have been out of control. the same is true in economic and military security. six and finally and reaching far beyond just our nafta discussions today, we should be clear about where we are in geopolitical competition over the coming decades. china has a plan and we don't have a plan. china has a plan for where they would like to see global economic relations and global security relations go, and the united states right now surely doesn't look like we have a plan. again, those six are far more

than enough that a promise i will be able to finish on time that i'll try to go very fast back to them and it will take a few questions and then kim will pull me from the stage. back to number one. it is indisputable that what is happening right now in the destruction of work is a consequence primarily of technology, not primarily of trade. trade is a big deal. i don't think anybody can use senate that is more pro-trade that i have have. i think trade has immense human benefits. and yet trade is not really what's driving most of the anxiety people feel right now we need to be clear about what is happening economically. so buy anabolic let's look at what happened to agriculture over the last century at a quarter and then what is now happening to industrial i think

of them as big tool economy jobs. if we understood the analogy to agriculture we would know how ridiculous it is to talk liquid fun to make america 1950 again. no one is ever going to make america 1950 again in terms of large-scale jobs i know it is open make america 1850 again in terms of agricultural jobs and none of us would think that we would want that. so in 1900, 41% of american workers work on the farm. today it is well under 2%. total agricultural output is off the charts higher in terms of quantity and quality than 118 musical. 41% of americans 1% of americans on the fonts in 1900. more than that still work on the farms but as a metaphor, or 1% of american workers were on the farm in 1900. today less than 2%. more total output. what's happening in manufactured? rhetoric in this town what politicians always lie and pretend they can fix whatever date bit of anxiety have come will bring back industrial factory jobs in the 1950s.

no, we are not. the high watermark of industrial employment in u.s. history was no, we are not. that is simply not true. it's not what's going to happen and there is no economic theory to defend that rubbish. in the mid-1950's where 31% of american workers worked in factories. today, 7% of american workers working factories and there's more total output in terms of both quantity and quality. the shape of the curve from agricultural revolution, i do me the agricultural revolution of mesopotamia 11,000 years, i mean at the end of 19th century begin at the 20th century, the shape of the curve is really similar, of the curve is really similar, from 41% to 2% in a daschle jobs. we got from 31% to 7% and the shape of the curve is going to continue to go down. the way that it goes down matters a lot to particular families lives, and we should have bigger discussions about what that looks like back we should survey understanding where we are in history.

transition to the second point. when you talk about protectionism as if it's going to protect those jobs, you don't have any theory to defend your position and you don't have any history to defend your position. so here's what actually happens when there's more protectionism, and let's talk in a look at the detail about the current terrace i did because what happens happens if we put these steel tariffs in place. consumers lose. whenever there are more terrace which just means tax on consumers, whenever there are more terrace, consumers on both sides of the border lose because you were telling voluntary parties who want to make something and solid and another volunteer party don't want to make something and buy it, that they can't go through with the transaction, a government will stand between you and say we want less of these transactions and so we'll put taxes injured in to distance and fight this transaction. consumers on both sides always lose inhibitors more protection. they were voluntary choices people want to make for

higher-quality lower-cost goods that there now prohibited from making because of some policymaking. that's a register one of the equation. register two of the equation is what happens to the protected industry and other domestic industries that need that industry -- hardly. i'm going to come back to that in just a second because the assumption most americans make is that consumers may lose protectionism but producers must win if so then we met out whether or not this equation is on that good. that's not true but i will come back to the question about the equation around producers. the third register in the equation is retaliatory stuff. so when we decide to put protective tariffs in place we can be sure because it's always what is happened, that there

will be retaliatory tariffs against the u.s. are as recent as a couple months it will be decide to tariffs in place against washing machines and against solar panels, what did will be retaliatory tariffs china target? they targeted sorghum and are specific farms in my state of talking about what happened to the workplace in the future markets in their place, interspace. so retaliatory tariffs are inevitable and that we always lose in that register three as well. the only thing that is disputable is what happens in register two? let's talk about the steel industry in america. how many steelworkers do you think there are? you don't need to shout it up and take a guess in your head. how many people do think working production steel in the united states? 140,000. how many people do you think working industries that use steel as a primary input for their factory jobs? 5.5 million. the steel tariffs that were talking but in washington, d.c. will kill jobs in america in steel. so consumers always lose with protectionism. retaliated against industries

always lose with protectionism, but even the politicians rhetorical lie that they won't save steel jobs can it's not true. you're going to cost steel jobs with these tariffs piccola question is how many. there are two studies have been done so far trying to model what happens with these protection tariffs and have between six to one one and 13 to one job loss. the economist had a piece out last week called the president were with adam smith, and their analysis said it's going to be 13 lost jobs for every job preserved in the steel industry. there's a bigger modeling that's been done at stake in which the will be 33,000 saved steel production jobs and 179,000 lost jobs. so a net loss of 146,000. look back to the steel tariffs at the end of george bush 431st administration, the administration knew by the 11th month that they were losing jobs in the industry they were seeking to protect with their steel tariffs. second point is indisputably

trade is good for america over all and trade is good for workers even in industries where seeking to protect. that doesn't change the fact that there are bad actors out there. china is doing bad things with a bunch of their oversupply in general, and in steel in particular. here's the good news. when the u.s. uses dispute resolution mechanisms that already exist, we almost always win. when we go to the devotee, we win more than 90% of the time. steel tariffs against china's bad practices have led to a reduction on the order of two-thirds come slightly more than two-thirds probably, over the last 48 months because we win more than 90% of the time. have been targeting certain chinese that practices and it turns out when we consider other chinese that practices, the best way to move forward is with other people who believe in the rule of law and getting them to come together with us through excellent organizations to try to defend antiterrorist behavior and non-come and attack

nontariff barriers as well. but all of that would assume we have enough shared literacy to understand what's happening in trade. here's one of the problems we have. the term trade deficit sets of bills in peoples minds that we are losing in some definable way understand what's happening in trade. because someone else is cheating. sometimes there is cheating and we should be vigorous and fishes our response we should be public and deliberate. we shouldn't make up a national security cause as a way to try to do something when their specific that action by china that we can resolve the mechanisms that already exist in the rule of law order. here's the problem with trade deficits. we have a picture in a mind of what trade deficit means, and if you go to mexico and you go into a retail store, it is true that you're not going to find a whole bunch of products made of plastic in steel that a stint made in the usa on the bottom.

when you go into walmart ten miles from here you are going to find lots of plastic and steel products that have made in mexico stamped on the bottom of them. so is the u.s. losing? are we losing as consumers or are we losing as consumers? we had to go one step deeper down the supply chain after that he go to factory in mexico that is supplying a lot of the plastic and steel stuff that is sold in their retail stores and sold in our walmarts, the big machines in those factories in mexico are probably made in the united states. what does that mean? it means that they are loaded up with services surplus. the u.s. accounting in those machines. they yet u.s. engineering in those machines. they have u.s. loitering in those machines. they have u.s. product design in those machines. they have u.s. financed in those machines. so the export of that machine carried with it a whole bunch of services surplus, and the dollars that we we're spending to buy stuff that come off that assembly line in mexico are

reinvested in the u.s. in terms of foreign direct investment that allows us to advance the next generation of those higher in the machines. the failure of washington to have a big discussion with the american people about what is actually happening in the economy has huge negative implications for our economics, for our civil society and our national security. because ultimately the people need to be told the truth. the people deserve to be told an honest answer but where we are in economic history. the people need not to be like to sync will make it 1950 again because it's not true and it's not going to help the specific workers in the specific disrupted industries and it sure a sec is a point help the kid to be told the primary problem they face is that they are victims of other people who are cheating to. that's not true. what's actually did for the united states and for our workers and for educational system, which needs to be radically upgraded, used to prepare for the more nimble economy of the future which is inevitable.

i was born in 1972, average duration at a firm in the 1970's was 26 years the average duration at it from today is four years and change. where did we talk about that? the number one driver of uninsurance in america, health uninsurance is job change. the public has no idea when you civic american people why do we have so much, why is uninsurance so much greater in 2010 and in 1990? a radical increase in health and insurance in america. do you know what the public thinks? too began to their socioeconomic status and health status. we don't have more sick people, don't have more poor people. when we have more uninsured people? because you tend to be uninsured for four to six months every time you change jobs. once you are changing jobs every four years, it means your uninsured one eighth of the time. time. that's not a small problem. that's a structural problem that means when you get the breast cancer diagnosis and jeff, the car accident, there is a 12% chance that you're going to a

time a structural uninsurance the majority uninsurable population, you with the people with the pre-existing condition ten, 15 just now. we should talk honestly about that. the majority uninsurable population, you with the people the reality is we need to create a mobile economy where we think the architecture of industrial era job benefits from the mid-1960s because without going back to the 1950s and 1960s matter how much anybody wanted to. the only thing this city has gotten done in the last half-century entrance of upgrading the social compact and the assumptions we make about where our benefits come from is defined benefit retirement plans. until 1986 we still had an assumption anybody would have a defined benefit pension for the whole life from there one firm, ayes retirement or college, high school graduation or college graduation into retirement experience, but that's not what people go through. the mckinsey study, i used to work at mckenzie global

institute and they had report come out in november of 2017 that i highly recommend to you. they spent 18 months modeling 46 countries, 91% of global tbg and 800 job categories. 91% of global gdp in their prediction based on their modeling is that 55% of total economic task in the global economy today will be disrupted inside fears based on already available ai. this is not to chest with from some new technology that may be created in 2021 and be applied by 2029.

this is based on ai that exist today what share of global economic jobs are disrupted inside the next 12 years. that is not to say that% of jobs evaporate but 5% of -- which means you bundle and unbundle current jobs they speculate that 60% of today's jobs are more than 30% automatable in that sense cells in people's minds to make the assumption that any stability in a job and that is not true. you are probably not can have stability in a job you don't plan to upscale as you go forward in your career. this is what apm stated that surprised americans in the 1970's and 1980's. like my mom, farm kid coming off the farm didn't go to college and didn't know anyone who had gone to college in her family

and she became a bank teller soon after graduating high school and this is in the late 1960's. the atm was created in 1967 in london and starts coming to the us in 1969, 70 and the assumption was that atms would upend all of these teller jobs in america. do you know what happened with the next 30 years? a pretty significant expansion in the number of tellers in america. why mark tellers to the whole bunch of different things and most of their time was spent on really low value tax like recounting the money in their drawers and trying to match it bunch of different things and with their book at the end of the day and counting it over and over again and machines are much better at this the people but tellers at that point were almost one 100% penal job. loan officers were almost a one 100% male job and you know what happened over the course of 20 years of the atm came to the us? the average bank went from needing $21 to meeting less than 13 what that led to was a radical expansion in the number of branches and franchises that banks can afford to open them

what happened was women climbing what happened was women climbing the career ladder and beginning to take over more and more of the task that had been loan officer jobs as they started to sell investment projects and sign people up the credit cards sell investment projects and sign people up the credit cards and all sorts of different products that seem to be well beyond the historic role of the teller. it reoriented things that no central planner could have predicted but ultimately in ways that led to the greater service of banks and lots of people across the economy but also lots more career opportunities for people. i think the mckinsey study suggest similar things will happen in our time. lots of jobs that look like they with their book at the end of might evaporate might actually climb the ladder of productive value for your neighbor. all of this point is forward and i will move toward wrapping up here. it points us toward the global security infusions of that. we are in a geopolitical completion with primarily, china but what we should recognize is if you think about global security challenges the us we tend to bucket them five ways. we say russia, china, north

korea, iran and a catchall category for g hardy. there is g hottie mess all of the world but not primarily driven by particular set of nationstate actors. when you look at the chinese tragedy and the russian strategy and the iranian strategy ask yourself this question do our neighbors like them or not and why and why do china's neighbors and russia's neighbors and iran's neighbors not like him? this may seem too poetic and too dramatic but because those nations don't believe in souls. we actually believe in universal human dignity. the american idea is premised on a certain set of assumptions about dignity and we believe particularly for the 320 million people that we are called in this room to serve but is an matter we believe it for seven and a billion people across the state of the globe we believe they are created with inherent dignity and that god gives them rights by nature. government exists to secure our

rights and government is of the author or source of our rights. nobody in toronto or in moscow or beijing thanks about their economic and military ambitions by talking first about the dignity of their neighbors. they talk about how they can so chaos among their your neighbors to create a buffer and a barrier against other people getting to that. they think if there near neighbors are weak they are protected and insulated and we believe exactly the opposite. we believe that when our allies are strong, we are strong. and when we are strong, our allies are strong. we don't believe there is a zero-sum game between the u.s. and canada. are strong, we are strong. we don't believe there's a zero-sum game between the u.s. and mexico. we actually believe that when mexico is driving there is less chaos on our border. we believe that when canada is driving, the global shop for that is north america means that

bmw and mercedes decide to start manufacturing cars destined for europe in south carolina and alabama -- that is pretty extraordinary. go to germany today the x series, one most common bmws on the road, the x series doesn't have any manufacturing in europe. it's done exclusively in south carolina. that is amazing. why does that happen? because we have a north american global shop store that produces really high-quality, low-cost stuff because we don't believe things are a zero-sum game and when american public rhetoric starts and when american public rhetoric degrades and declines to the place where someone can say a phrase like, nafta has been bad good for me mexico and america in their minds and we must of got taken and we must of negotiated like some bad deal because it's not just been good for mexico than we must of lost. that assumes that every deal is a zero-sum game. it is not true trade. trade is a win win and there are

deals in the world and in a real estate deal if after the deal you find out that your counterparty got a really good deal then maybe you didn't negotiate that well because if that deal went through and your counterparty got a good deal you probably left money on the table and probably overpaid. but that is not how trade works. trade is a really good picture of a commerce between people who believe in their dignity and want the best for each other and want the best for their own consumers and families and producers and to therefore also in the thinking that military alliances between us are probably good for them and good for us. it's the best bulwark against the chinese road initiative that you can imagine but right now we are doing that in this city as we deliberate against what the next century look like. thank you for having me. [applause]

>> tim asked me to take one question and i will defer to someone and we will go right here. >> [inaudible] you opposed mr. lighthouse's nomination last year, but where are things at this time and has the conference moved where? towards a more pretrade position or has it always been there and how do you think gop borders will hear this message of perfectionism going forward? >> kim wanted us to take one question to keep me on a short leash on time and you just asked a question that is worthy of about eight hours a response so i will just say very briefly something about the folks i am privileged to serve at home and then i'll make slightly longer

comments about if the republican party knows what it stands for. at the level of getting to represent 1.9 million nebraskans we are, i think, the most export dependent state. per capita in the union and we are the most productive land in human history. there is nobody better at feeding the world the nebraska farmers today and what we grow we can't possibly eat it all. we need export markets to do well what we do great. ultimately, we want a world where comparative advantage works for us as consumers and families and moms and dads at the store but as producers who are better than anyone in the world. your household shouldn't spend time doing something that you cost you more to build than you goodbye and no nation should want to be filled with people who spend a whole bunch of time producing something that is far more costly to produce than they could buy a broad and nebraskans get that. where i am from, counterpart for party people understand that trade is a really big deal and our politicians a lot harder to understand what motivates these people.

i'm one of i think, a single digit people in the senate has never been a politician before. be skeptical of politics is not not -- i'm the most conservative record according to the heritage i'm second so this is not an argument for machine middle but i'm really skeptical of both of these parties standing very much right now. i think there was survey data out a small were for you to for stories on the american people are you more republican or more democrat and you don't give them the choice say none of the above and are you more republican or democrat in about 46% of people which is the plurality wenner interrupts a none of the above. when it's not a choice they still want to register their disapproval with these parties and it's about 29% and 25% are and if you are in my party that's scary because the 29% them is much younger than the 25% that are when you look at the picture but when you drill a layer deeper why are you republican and why are you democrat?

about two thirds of voters responded by telling you how much they hate the other party. all we are really doing -- it's a fair hypothesis to say that america's 10% democrat, a percent republican in 82% toss it all out. i get that sentiment so i think that trade the public wants a big discussion and so that is my belief. when you give them a binary choice they know it's easier to scapegoat trade that you talk in any detail about the complexities of what you're going through with automation and disruption in the economy. we need that bigger discussion so we can make rational decisions on policy about trade. inside my party inside the 51 republican senators overwhelmingly almost everyone is for pretrade whether they have the courage of their conviction to say that in public is much less clear. thank you for having me. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon and a continuation of this discussion on the north american free trade agreement and its implications. ambassador asked as we were walking up here why did you schedule the senator first and it's just might be difficult to be able to stop those remarks in

the discussion that he engendered that it does better inform it and i'm going to go out of order in terms of who is sitting up here and to start with in the interest of time obviously everyone up here has had a very distinguished career in government and in service to our nation and so i will not spend a lot of time but in introducing the ambassador with the first question i would simply say as my ambassador in mexico in 1989 to 1993 and nafta 1.0 when we serve together he is a five-time ambassador and deputy national security adviser and deputy secretary of state and the first director of national intelligence where i went and had the privilege of serving with him again as his chief of staff in 2005. a distinguished career.

probably because of that early start on nafta take us back, ambassador, 25-ish years ago to what led to why we have nafta in terms of mexico's commitment to it, but also the united states and canada. what was the vision that has served us so well over the last 25 years? >> thank you, david. good afternoon, everybody. david refers to our service together in mexico it was an absolute delight to work with you and work with you and subsequent years, as well. david did have quite a bit to do with the economic issues that we were following at the time including the two-way

negotiations. it is a long story how do i make it brief? you have to start with 1985 in mexico decides to join the gap and miguel takes the decision that it is time to better integrate the mexican economy with the rest of the world and there ensued a period of time where holding trade discussions with mexico on a sector by sector basis automobiles, appliances, whatever and we got to the administration of carlos salinas and we continued with that approach for a while but salinas and we continued with then the presence went to davos in january, i guess it would've been in in 1990 and the berlin wall had come down and eastern european countries that liberated themselves from the soviet union. and president salinas all these eastern europeans lobbying for investments and funds from different private-sector

investments because they knew going forward, they would have to depend more on the private sector and he concluded that mexico needed to do something more to compete for the world savings and the world's capital. he then proposed to president bush that we consider negotiating in north america a free trade agreement and he expected it to be trilateral and frankly, mainly because mr. baker had not been enamored with negotiating the bilateral agreement with canada. not much before then but once we started down the road of pursuing and exploring the possibility of a nafta agreement, brian maroney beat a

hasty path toward maine. [laughter] to join in that negotiations because i think he was concerned that the us under the other circumstance of us having a bilateral with mexico and canada. where we would be driving everything and that brought us to the nafta. i really do think that it happened because on trade grounds we realized that the sector by sector approach had exhausted its limits and just how much more can you do that and you really had to move to a model where you identify the exceptions to your overall pretrade policy rather than going through sector by sector to decide what in the myriad sectors of our respective economies we would allow in or out which could still -- which could take forever. you could still be in negotiating with sector by sector trade agreements so that

is how it started. i want to introduce the personal and the political notion because i think it is important that the bush administration was primarily run by texans. he was a texan and jim baker was a texan, robert mosbacher was a texan and they understood then, as they understand today, the importance of trade with mexico. there was a political and geographic convergence here that made this possible and the rest is history. >> the rest is in the history but i think it spoke volumes of the vision that president salinas said when it took on and challenging his own party at the time in terms of looking at the north and making that commitment to go into the -- to go into an agreement with the united states. >> all of you in mexico know that everyone who works on economic policy for the

last 30 or 40 years has a phd from mit or chicago or yale or harvard and you name it and -- >> well, salinas was harvard and ey the secretary was mit and i think the trade negotiators, quite a few of them were from chicago and that is true to the state. so, they were ahead of their people and salinas spent a lot of time selling his public on the fta and these [inaudible] that he would take one day a week the different states of mexico and he would meet with ordinary people and he would sit down and painstakingly explained to them why and -- why a fta would be in their interest and they were not that easy to convince. there were a lot of people in mexico

who were afraid of a free trade agreement including practically all the chambers they could find in the country. >> let me introduce ambassador wayne. anthony wayne, a long distinguished career as an ambassador as well having served in mexico from 2011-2015 he is a career ambassador as of 2010, i believe, in terms of the nomination served well as it afghanistan and in argentina as an ambassador and a long and distinguished career. ambassador wayne, can you give us a sense of expanding what i think was senator sasse's point about how nasa affects and continued to affect the other elements of the relationship with mexico in particular but obviously free to talk about canada well outside the ambit of trade and trade and finance. wayne: sure. i think

manyenator made outstanding remarks and second he is exactly right on that point that when you start trading and investing in working with others you find other common interests and you develop those. what we can see the history of us-mexico relations is that this developed during the 1990's and the 2000s and the last decade as you know there was a large crisis in 1995 and president clinton made a bold move to support mexico. that further solidified the cooperation not just with the trade negotiators but in the case of finance and right after that we supported mexico to join the oecd the sort of club

largely developed in wealthier economies. >> we decided that in the bush administration. wayne: and it took place in 1996, i think. and then still in the early 2000's we had very good discussions among the financial and trade both but it was a little more quite a bit more distant with foreign ministry. the former ambassador of mexico is here today and i have actually talked about this and written a piece on it somehow through the 2000 we gradually expanded our cooperation in foreign policy areas and in other types of international work together and then the big jump forward was the creation of the narrative -- of the maritime initiative in 2008. that was under george bush and president called the rhône -- and president calderon.

and for the first time, not that there had not been cooperation before, but it set up a formal program where we weren't just having law enforcement people work to track down this criminal or that criminal but we were working together to improve institutions and processes in with the mexicans very much in the lead but with us providing technical expertise and funding in certain kinds of equipment and training that went forward. over the years since 2008 that has gone forward and gradually expanded into different areas -- different areas. it took one president left and the other person came in there were a number of months where the new administration was saying what are we doing with the united states and we want to do this and eventually they said yes, we do want to keep doing this. they saw it was a mutual value and what has happened under this program is people have also got to know each other. they build confidence with each other so now we have

very intense dialogues and practical relationships across the border and in dealing with migrants coming forward and in dealing with drug gangs encountered drug trafficking and it still has a ways to go in reaching the ultimate ends but it is quite clear if you look at the facts but just the number of issues that we work on and this continued in a foreign policy that in international organizations it helps in central america in looking at the caribbean in a whole host of areas that we would not have thought of cooperating about when i first came across mexico in the 1970's and or early in my 1980's career. it really has transformed the way the mexicans and americans have looked at each other and that is one of the things very honestly that i am most worried about now in

this situation and you can see in the polling results in the polls taken by you and others in mexico show that from a 66 favorable view of the united states it has dropped down to 37% favorable view in mexico. when i talk to colleagues and friends they say our sons and daughters who grew up in that post- nafta era who looked at the united states as a close partner and a place to learn in a place to grow sometimes to live but often to go study and come back to mexico are now taking another look at the united states through these lenses and that is, i think, the dangerous potential in this current situation. we don't want to go back to that period of time when ambassador started off her we were characterized as distance neighbors. show less

-- as distant neighbors. >> well said. i can't emphasize enough that the current administration's support on issues such as venezuela in the crisis that we are facing their as being part of the partnership that reflects. it's not just the border issue and not just the immigration issues and not just a transnational crime organizational operation in -- cooperation in terms of countering that. a chairman and cofounder of the financial integrity network, a former colleague of mine at the white house, deputy national advisor for the counterterrorism and i would put him in the category of being a national treasure and it comes to really the design in the previous decade of the illicit finance identification as an instrument of national power. turning to you with the question of the context of

international finance and a platform in which nafta has been a useful means to an end of identifying to the transparent kind of way the issues related to illicit finance and challenges that by max goes on a mission they face and we cooperate on in our current relationship with mexico. talk to us a bit about that from your perch where you are today and in your observations. cracks thank you, david. thank you for this kind word from you it is the highest honor. thank you for the invitation to heritage for having me. i'm happy to carry the bags of these gentlemen who have distinguished careers. i'm happy to be up here. the question is an important one because if you take the lands back both -- the lens back both

historically and systemically nafta as part of a broader story of the deepening of the relationships the us and mexico in a way that has drawn our systems much more closely together. and to tony's point, especially during the initiative. was one in which build upon what were very strong relationships sector by sector and institution by institution and military law and intel and the financial services sector. what you saw in that

period was both a deepening of the relationships and a sense of the strategic in some very important ways. there are two things that haven't been mentioned that are worth talking about and then touch on your question. first was the notion that the us and mexico were part of a broader global environment in which we had a stake, not only in each other's success but what was happening around us and with us. part of the success of the marriage initiative was us and mexico looking outward toward central america and toward latin america. even beginning to talk about the challenge in china in a very interesting way. that began to reshape a bit of the conception of what nafta meant in terms of that relationship. secondly, again, and after that drove this but in recent years a deepening of the sense of a systemic links between the us and mexico. the natural links of commerce and trade in communities and border communities et cetera are well known to us but between and it is a community in those between the infrastructure sector and the transport sector in the whole controversy but the very notion that we were a part of systemic links that were

critical and important to not only economic growth of security but also national security. in that then was the recognition that between particularly us treasury and the mexican treasury department that there was a shared interest in both the security and integrity of the financial system where we faced challenges from drug money laundering and face challenges from organized crime groups ms 13 now much in the news and the ability of actors to move money easily, globally to evade sanctions and all the things that us cared for mentally about financial integrity perspective was now a part of the dialogue with mexico. that has not been without challenge course. we've all seen and been a part of these discussions on the risking of the banks and the challenge they are where us institutions and us treasury and authority have demanded much more of mexican institutions along with other globally so that has forged a much deeper

conversation around the systemic links between us and mexico and the shared values, standards and practices are to the extent that it is forced and created some incredibly important innovation. the us and mexico have strategic bilateral dialogue where the banking regulators have cooperated more closely than most other regulators between neighbors and often worried about the same banks or institutions together. if two financial intelligence units working closely together and embedded units in law-enforcement and networks of concern. we've seen recent indictments out of san diego tie to us, mexico related links in criminality and us mexican authorities have worked closely together with you even had the discussion of how to deal with interests aliens from the counterterrorist and in all of its forms the us relationship has been largely around the systemic links and size of the

us and mexico for their authorities frankly even the private sector can work more closely together to strengthen their systems and to strengthen the ability to deal with financial integrity in a fundamental way. a final point if you will allow me, this is really important as we think about the geopolitical aspects of the challenge from china but also the future of regional economies because i think the reality is we are, like it or not, systemically tied to mexico whether financial sector or instructor sector or because of community ties. my father comes from guadalajara and so i'm part mexican, part cuban and full californian and full american but the reality is systemic the ties will grow more closely and when you listen to secretary nielsen for the department of homeland security, she is

talking rightfully about the security systems and cascading threats and the millions that we have to be worried about. we have to begin to think about mexico as a key systemic partner and a key element of that resilience when we think about things like supply chain security and we think about cyber security and when we think about transport security. all of that is critical to our own security and that often is an unstated strategic dimension of the relationship that goes above and beyond catching one

particular criminal worried about one particular money-laundering case. show less text 01:01:43 unidentified speaker david, i give you the room there. 01:01:45 unidentified speaker thank you. [laughter] 01:01:47 unidentified speaker i have eric farnsworth to my left and he has had a distinguished career of focusing on the western hemisphere, state department and the bureau of western hemisphere affairs and with the office of the us trade representative as well as senior advisor to the white house and

special envoy to the americas. the fact that he is a midwesterner and so on my. for those of you looking at your ncaa brackets, one piece of advice. do not ever, ever overlook them in american conference. i had buffalo. for next year remember the mac indeed it is a conference to be reckoned with. nonetheless, david, a very important question. nafta was a

creature of the previous time. it was almost 25 years ago in -- and the world has changed. think about it in the context of everything we heard from senator sasse about the technology changes they are in many of the things we take his routine today phones, e-mail, social media and just everything we do in the daily life didn't exist back then but think about it in terms of the automobile you are driving in 1994 compared to the automobile you are driving today. or should i say the automobile that drives itself today. this is technological change that is rapid and complete unimaginable and apologies to those who negotiated but you can't predict the future. nafta, however, as the documents of the early '90s didn't capture these changes in -- did not capture these changes. they could not have. when you say what should be be looking to do we should be looking to update the arrangements include whole categories of beneficial

exchange that did not exist before. we should also be including categories of economic exchange that did exist but weren't included in the original agreement for political reasons, specifically energy. it wasn't included in the original nafta because it was too politically sensitive and mexico with the constitution it was something that was not timely to talk about it now it is. mexico has gone through program energy dynamics and global has shifted fundamentally -- exporting energy is supposed to be an energy dependence on other countries and this is a shift in the global economy and we should be bringing energy into a new nafta and why would we want to do that? one of the reasons that has been alluded to by the previous panelist. but, let me focus on it. the idea of locking in behavior and in other words, trying to determine what is permissible in terms of north american economic exchange and what falls outside of that so when there are

reforms that are made and brought into nafta it makes it politically much less likely, if not indeed impossible, and that is critical. that is not just an academic exercise. it was ambassador wayne referenced the -- ambassador wayne who referenced the peso crisis in 1995. and the peso crisis would not have come out the same way had nafta not existed back then. the way was because we had seen that movie in the 1980s when mexico went through a similar peso crisis and took them eight years, nine years to get back to global capital markets. after nafta and the next peso crisis in 1995 it took them nine months. why was that? because nafta requires certain behaviors that mexico had to take to keep the market open and to keep the borders open and to keep the trade open with the united states and to keep them as one of the economy to require certain behaviors of the political class that they could not take but they might've wanted to take and that they indeed did take later on. all of us, excuse me, poor hand in the previous crisis. all of us have

elections. canada, certainly, united states, mexico and they all have consequences. tesco -- mexico faces and election in july we don't know how that will turn out but we do know that the countries have come to the conclusion that is in their best interest to lock in the search patterns of behavior for the long-term that will then find the leaders to the respective countries and that is what we should be looking at in the negotiations. for example it doesn't make sense to put in place sunset clauses that would require a whole new negotiation every five years? probably not. not in a contest nor in the context of certainty and credibility for not just investors but for the entire people of north america who are trying to plan a future together and we are trying to figure out what the future looks like. the second point i would make is

credibility. nafta was negotiated by a republican president and passed under a democratic president and passed on a bipartisan basis on a bicameral basis and that's about as solid as you can get in the context of the united states under supporting and underwriting anything. is now the united states is able to unilaterally say we were just joking who is then going to come forward in any context say to the united states yeah, sure, we will take your word? thathole basis of trust the three previous panelists have been talking about is not to say it will evaporate because they have their own interests but it will take more challenging in my view to be able to come to the same place strategically to say this is what the united states will do and you can count on us. that is something to be very careful about something i would suggest is looking at where the negotiations could come out is that china has already been referenced.

that is absolutely right. china existed in 1994 but certainly not in the same way it did now in the global economy and if the united states is looking to compete globally with china whether technology or whatever it is you can't do that in isolated economy. you have to do it with your neighbors. in terms of the supply chain and in terms of us content that is now in mexican and canadian productions -- 25% from canada and 40% from the united states. the equivalent content in chinese production is 4%. ten times higher with mexico than with china. if we are looking at partners to try to be able to do our own economic capacity forget about the strategic for a minute. if it is simply economic way to do that is to get closer together with our partners and develop those supply chains in a

different way include more categories than previously existed in the agreement and bind that into the longer-term and then we've got the basis of a strategy that senator sessions e wasat senator sass talking about in terms of needing to have something that we can rely on going forward as increasingly seek to compete effectively with china so there are number of issues here and hopefully that we are keeping in mind in the agreement. >> thank you, eric. love continue to pull the camera back and openly after to the implications of a withdrawal from nafta. tony, talk to us about in terms of the credibility not only of the united states for that to happen in terms of other objectives in the western hemisphere and beyond but how does china and how does russia and how do other countries respond and react to what they would if you -- what they would view as

potentially real opportunities to come in to that particular space, as well. >> there are a couple of different angles. one is the chinese angle and as we know very well they greatly expanded their trade and economic interactions with the rest of latin america. others would certainly see a sign that the united states is pulling out of nafta and a sign that they better develop relations with other countries. very happily there is a more positive model that took place with the former tpp 11, the other members of the tpp who many included me were worried that they would not be able to continue their negotiation in that china would have a lot of space but japan really started to show and demonstrate leadership working with australia and brought the other 11 together and they just signed this new agreement which

is the most up-to-date agreement free-trade agreement in the world and for the first time as an integrated internet related chapter and it is a based agreement that binds everybody including the least developed countries like vietnam and it sets good standards for them and a lot of those are standards that the united states argued for and helped to get in there before it left and so at a minimum it is these countries saying we don't want to be left out there by ourselves and we can do it working with others and we can have a multilateral rules based agreement that works and is beneficial. but the chinese as the senator said and others have said they have a long-term vision and they will work at that and they are good at having a long-term vision and they make mistakes along the way

sometimes as their post- 1949 history has shown is a big mistake but right now they seem to be on an economic role and as the senator also said it's not all clear that we have a strategic plan in vision to take on that competition that is out there. it is not just about competing with china. this is a global economy where things will be changing rapidly and most of know what has agreed that that -- that the rapidity of the change will keep going on and it will mean that all competitors just have to be smarter and

trade is a vital part of that. especially in our own hemisphere. if you look at these maps to choose who is the number one trading partner in the world 10 years ago, and who was the number one partner today, there is a big jump in china and a reduction where the u.s. was number one. that is a clarion call to action for us that we should be thinking with a bigger vision, and working out from a basis which should be our production basis in north america. we can make this a north american century if we do it right, or we can let it be somebody else's century if we fall back. sasse spoke ofr technology being the big disruptor as opposed to trade. how do you respond to those who would suggest that nafta is a big employment dislocate her?

it is an employment loser for trying of the economy in to sell the changes that nafta would project in terms of where we are. >> first, let me say, i agree with others who thought the senators remarks were terrific. you asked me a question about history before. there is one party forgot to mention, which was a key piece of our ability to move on this sector-based to a broader base trade negotiation. that was that mexico resolved its debt issue, the brady bonds and all of that stuff. citibank involved, and

was leading the consortium. that was a bellwether event. and someone mentioned the peso prices. somebody who works on the issue of greece told me, if only the eu had responded to greece's problems, bill clinton extended a bridge loan of $50 billion to mexico within weeks when this crisis erupted. if somebody had done that for theye at the beginning could have spared them of the entire crisis. the question of job loss and technology, i have not done this lately, but you can probably demonstrate where nafta has saved jobs in the united states 4%going to the point about

versus 40% or whatever. you can even find examples of companies that have located -- or relocated in china and are starting to come back to north america because of competitive conditions here have improved. i think the answer is that we are not losing jobs because of manufacturing jobs. there are some instances, i remember explicitly companies telling me by putting a plan in mexico we are saving a number of high-quality jobs in the united states. i would not be surprised if that argument still prevails. but, i think the broader this north american platform, one other point -- and area i would be afraid of if we were not to renew, or if we were to abandon nafta, which i

personally do not believe we will, but if we were to do that, is in the energy sector. here we are, they have energy reform. this energying producer, and i understand and the last round the agreed to have an energy chapter in nafta. why create an opportunity for china and russia to penetrate the mexican energy market? you want to see the copy? just look at what is happening in venezuela if you want to know what is cap -- what is going to happen in mexico long-term if we drop nafta. and do not have good provisions on energy. toi want to say amen negroponte just said. i am not an economist. i cannot speak to data.

obviously there are issues of worker retraining and things to do with the technological changes, but i think the reality absent ourselves from nafta or trade deals that bind the u.s. and next amount -- and mexico and north american quarters, we shrink the imagination and opportunity. ,he last example is the best because we are at a point of being, not an energy exporter, but an energy giant that has strategic impact. we have not fully conceived it yet. if we shut off the aperture of the opportunity because of not but having nafta in place, antibodies in the system, it needs to be recognized, i think senator sasse alluded to this. tony, you did as well. , there is going

to be a sense of resentment and that not onlyreat hurts the united states in terms of the realm of the possible, but also on the mexican side. what they are willing to do, what they are willing to benefit or even cost. that is where the chinese and other actors are willing to play, especially when they are playing by different rules, willing to play by different economic margins. all the things we have seen china do in other environments. effect about the ripple of both the psychological and the element of economic imagination that is lost if we retreat. because then we are left with picking up the pieces as opposed to thinking forward in as

aggressive way as possible. that has regional impact. david, you and tony were talking about this. i do wonder what this does for a broader u.s. policy and how other partners around the world, ,articularly in the region viewed the attractiveness of u.s. capital and investment. they will still be interested in it, it will have a different tinge to it. i worry about the psychological, political, and economic impact of that, which i do not think anyone can project, and there are probably no numbers for it, but that is harmful to the u.s. overall, not helpful. >> can i just add one factor? i think it is useful to remember especially because it came out of the heritage study in 1993, i think it was. the estimate was 700,000 u.s. jobs tied to trade with mexico.

wasestimate looking at 2015 4.9 million. it is hard for me, it makes it hard to argue there has been a net loss of jobs. loss of jobs,n a and it is not the same people that got new jobs. that is the problem. that is what the senator was talking about. that is what we all need to talk about. there is no question we have created new jobs in all three countries, but for this debate, importantly in the united states out of our growing trade with mexico. and there is another study that was just done down in texas. just looking at the border states, it argues if we take the next step forward in border integration we will create 900,000 to one million new jobs just in the border states, not counting the mexico side. there is no question that a new modern nafta with more

connectivity can create a lot more jobs, and can make us more productive compared to others in the world. >> eric, and a little bit of time we have left, can you talk are, what canada's demands and where might it come off the rails from the canadian standpoint in terms of dispute asolution, dairy, those are couple of areas where there is conflict, but there may be other areas. they are two of the most important areas. the interesting thing about this, these are not new issues. these are issues we dealt with the first time. this gives our negotiating partners, and to have expanded demands. and it iseal,

interesting in washington, oftentimes we think we are the only ones in the united states with interests or demands. we have to remember our negotiating partners have theirs as well, and they are equally politically sensitive to those economies. they are equally tied to elections and democracy, and results along those lines as well. canada does not have the same electoral calendar as we do. parliamentary system etc., they are not on the mexican calendar. they do not have u.s. midterms. they have the ability to wait this one out a little longer. prime minister trudeau when he was in chicago recently said as much. he said, look, we want nafta, but we want to good nafta, and that is what we will hold out for. in the canadian context, that is arguing for some of the same things that were controversial in the past that had to be part of the final negotiation. according to some histories, the

last thing to be resolved in the original nafta had nothing to do with mexico. it was chapter 19, it was a demand of canada, and it was jim baker who had to make the call and say we will have to do this. canada was saying there was a dispute resolution. that is something that remains important, part of the dialogue today. in some cases, it is one of these things. i know time is short. there was a letter that was released yesterday by 10 former commanders of united states formern command, and commanders of the southern command, and talk specifically about those issues, the issues of nafta from an economic perspective, but more important are from the broader strategic aspect of. if you have not seen a, i would call it to your attention. it was an important statement,

and it captures these issues that i think call to attention that nafta is an economic agreement, yes, but more importantly it is a strategic agreement. on that basis, i would say the united states needs to keep pushing forward to see if we can come to some sort of closure on that basis. two months from now, where will we be a nafta? >> i'm an optimist, but i'm not quite sure. the emphasis on national economic security is now the national security in a heavyweight. the heavy focus on china as a competitor and even a challenger in the economic space, the need for the u.s. to not upset too many apple carts with too many allies. i think we see this in the tariff debate. it lends, in my sense, to

suggesting we are going to see positive progress and not a ditching of nafta. i do not know if we get a deal before the relative elections, but i am more optimistic, not given both the dynamics internally, but more importantly the external dynamics which i think will be more important. in that regard, watch the iran deal. deal impacts the european view of united states. and whether the u.s. is the bull in a china shop area whether or not the president can demonstrate he can capture a win with key allies in canada and mexico. juan that it is important to look at the playing board, and that will impact this negotiation, where we are. i think we will be one of two places. we will make a good progress so we will take a pause at the elections take place on the

basis of the good progress. and maybe go ahead and look to reengage, or, nafta will be dragging on in this uncertain state until the mexican elections and a new president comes in, and we have to take it up late this year or early next year. i hope it is the former. i hope the optimism is correct. i think that would be better for all three countries. i am not sure yet which it is going to be. i think it will go through, whether it happens now or later, i do not know. it is in the mutual interest of all three countries. i think we have enough interests , affected interests in this country who have spoken up, so it must have registered at the white house. i'm sure it has. in addition to watching whatever happens to the iran deal, i would watch what we do with

china, and if we take some tough measures against china, that might relieve some of the pressure to take tough action. >> i have no crystal ball either. note,sitive thing i would the steel tariffs, mexico was exempted, that is a good sign. i am optimistic that i think people recognize parts of nafta and will work forward to bring this to a conclusion, whether that will be done in the next few months i cannot say. the final thing i would say, generally to this point and for obvious reasons, this has been the conversation among the executive branches, but it is apparent the u.s. congress and senate are becoming increasingly active on this as well, and are making clear to the white house what provisions they would accept. negotiating, it has to be brought back to the u.s. congress, and if it cannot has the congress it does not matter

what has been negotiated. this has to be brought into account. from a positive perspective, my sense is congress is part of this conversation, which it should be an needs to be. i think that will push forward to a positive conclusion. that the congress and the governors will be affected as well. continues nafta will strategic pause in the next two months. we will be looking at it toward the end of the calendar year in terms of closure. thank you, panelists. thank you, heritage, for hosting us. and go free trade. [applause]

>> sunday on c-span "q&a" colorado professor talks about his book, and the idea of america. reading of american termscs is empowering in of this country stands for and theg very special, storytellers are saying our tribe wants to be something special. not just a city on a hill, but a city that cares and loves one another. and understand that politics is indispensable to bringing about progress for as many people as possible. >> "q