“The question now is how Mexico and Canada sell this at home — making these unilateral concessions to us — in exchange for nothing.”
The talks will be Mr. Trump’s biggest test yet as a deal maker on the international stage,
and they could determine how other countries approach the administration in future one-on-one negotiations
The language in a letter that Mr. Lighthizer sent to Congress last month giving official notice
that the administration planned to renegotiate Nafta strongly echoed the wording used by the Obama administration when it laid out its negotiating objectives for the multicountry T. P.P.
Nationalists such as Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief political strategist,
and Peter Navarro, the chief trade adviser, are urging the president to take a more protectionist approach, and officials like Gary D. Cohn, the president’s chief economic adviser, and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, are expressing more openness to free trade.
