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OTTAWA — Canada’s chief negotiator for an update to the North American Free Trade Agreement says some of the United States’ proposals are “completely unworkable.”

Steve Verheul told a House of Commons committee Monday that Canada will not accept the most “extreme” demands coming from President Donald Trump’s administration, implying that his Mexican counterparts are of the same mind.

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In some of the strongest language yet from a Canadian official, Verheul described how he sees five U.S. proposals, in particular, as potentially detrimental to the North American free trade zone.

First, the Americans are pressing that, for automobiles to be eligible for tariff-free access within NAFTA, they would have to contain 50-per-cent U.S. content and 85-per-cent regional content. The current requirement is 62.5 per cent.

These “wholly unworkable” and “damaging” proposals appear to have been brought forward without much analysis, Verheul said, and Canada has been trying to explain why the policies could result in auto manufacturers moving their operations offshore, to the detriment of North American jobs.