WASHINGTON — Donald Trump's new point man on trade negotiations has shed some light on key goals in revamping the North American Free Trade Agreement, hinting Friday that priority No. 1 involves more automobile parts sourced close to home. The newly confirmed U.S. commerce secretary told a television interviewer he intends to move quickly on NAFTA negotiations and wants to be aggressive on trade-related issues to spur domestic manufacturing. Wilbur Ross was asked what he considers the most egregious parts of the current agreement, and the first thing he mentioned was interpreted by several observers as a reference to the formula for calculating car-part imports. "First of all, I think the rules of origin were far too lenient (in NAFTA)," Ross told CNBC.

Wilbur Ross is interviewed in Statuary Hall on Feb. 28 (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty) "Rules of origin means how much goods can come in from countries outside NAFTA — and yet get all the benefits of absolution from tariffs.... I think those can be tightened up quite a bit." It's still unclear whether his rule-tightening talk is aimed at the U.S.'s neighbours, designed to limit imports within the continent — or at intercontinental trade, and limited imports from more distant suppliers in Asia. But he appeared to provide a clue about how he intends to do it. Ross at one point referred favourably to an aspect of the Trans-Pacific Partnership — a now-dead deal he opposed, and which would have allowed more Asian car parts tariff-free into North America. "First of all, I think the rules of origin were far too lenient (in NAFTA)." There were some good things in the TPP that tightened rules, he said. To observers, that could mean he wants to change the formula for calculating rules of origin. Because while the TPP was designed to increase the percentage of auto parts imported from Asia, it also promised producers a more stringent formula to calculate domestic content. North American auto workers fumed about TPP lowering the domestic content requirement by 17.5 per cent. On the other hand, the deal offered a half-dozen pages of new definitions for what qualified as domestic content. To explain the difference, Flavio Volpe of the Automotive Parts Manufacturer's Association uses an analogy: suppose NAFTA was a two-page contract promising $10 million in business to North American suppliers; then TPP promised just $5 million — with 100 pages of legal protection.