Trump: I want to speed up NAFTA renegotiation

President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would like to “speed” up the process of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

During a meeting with senators at the White House, Trump again complained about NAFTA, a frequent target of his ire on the campaign trail. As he has before, the president charged that the trade agreement, signed into law in the 1990s, has been a “catastrophe” for American jobs and workers and asserted that he wants to “change it.”


That change, Trump said, could take the form of a “new NAFTA” or “renovation of NAFTA,” but regardless, he wants it done quickly.

“I would like to speed it up if possible,” Trump said, without offering specifics on what kind of agreement such a renegotiation should ultimately yield. “You're the folks that can do it, senator. So important.”

Trump’s comments signal that the president will continue to prioritize trade during his first days in office. During his first week, he pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multilateral trade agreement with mostly Asian countries that was negotiated under former President Barack Obama.

The new president has been a harsh critic of what his adviser Steve Bannon calls “globalism.” Trump has advocated trade and immigration policies that go against decades of established protocol in how the U.S. engages with the world, and in the case of his critique of free trade, he has also bucked Republican orthodoxy.