The good news: this round of North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations didn’t end with Canada and the U.S. in a new argument.

The bad news: they didn’t make progress on the things they were arguing about before.

The fifth round of the renegotiation, which concluded Tuesday in Mexico City, produced progress on low-key matters, such as telecommunications and customs enforcement, but little to none on the big issues that threaten to ruin the talks initiated by President Donald Trump.

For example, Canada and Mexico declined to present a counter-offer to an American proposal on automotive manufacturing that is loathed even by the U.S. auto industry.

Instead, Canada delivered a kind of lecture on the protectionist proposal, explaining how it would hurt both countries and pressing the U.S. for further specifics.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said there was “some very good concrete progress on some of the more technical chapters” important to Canadian businesses. But she added, “There are some areas where more extreme proposals have been put forward.

“These are proposals that we simply cannot agree to,” she told reporters in Ottawa. “What we’ve done in some of those areas is ask for a better understanding of those proposals. We really feel that a fact-based approach is the way to get a good result.”

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer expressed frustration with the approach taken by Canada and Mexico, calling on them to “come to the table in a serious way.”

“While we have made progress on some of our efforts to modernize NAFTA, I remain concerned about the lack of headway. Thus far, we have seen no evidence that Canada or Mexico are willing to seriously engage on provisions that will lead to a rebalanced agreement. Absent rebalancing, we will not reach a satisfactory result,” he said in a statement.

A Canadian official said on condition of anonymity: “On the controversial proposals, we cannot really negotiate as there seems to be little room to do so and little logic to the proposals.”

There did not appear to be progress on dairy, on which the U.S. wants Canada to dismantle its own protectionist system, or on government procurement, on which the U.S. has proposed protectionist “Buy American” rules that would freeze out many Canadian firms.

In fact, the New York Times reported, Mexico responded to that proposal with a point-making protectionist proposal of its own, suggesting a plan that would effectively deny Americans access to Mexican government contracts.

Some observers saw hints of a U.S. softening on its proposal for a five-year automatic termination clause, but the three sides did not come to any conclusion on the “sunset” subject.

There are at least short-term benefits to Canada’s strategy of delaying engagement on contentious topics, said Robert Fisher, a U.S. negotiator for the original NAFTA talks and now managing director of Washington trade consulting firm Hills and Co.

Dragging out the talks, Fisher said, creates time for powerful U.S. interests opposed to the Trump proposals to put their own pressure on the administration.

In the last week alone, 57 House Republicans wrote to Lighthizer to criticize the auto proposal; the third-ranking Senate Republican, John Thune, wrote to Lighthizer to call for labour mobility and criticize Trump’s focus on trade deficits; and the second-ranking Senate Republican, John Cornyn, held a Texas hearing in which he hailed NAFTA as “overwhelmingly positive” for the state.

“In my view, the U.S. is firmly entrenched in many of these positions, and it’s not going to be the Canadians and Mexicans that are going to change the mind of the U.S. administration. It’s going to be U.S. stakeholders and, more importantly, Congress,” said Dan Ujczo, an Ohio trade lawyer with Dickinson Wright. “And I think that’s been the most significant development between Round 4 and Round 5: Congress is more actively engaged.”

But Fisher emphasized that Canada’s strategy also carries risks. Because the U.S. and Mexican political calendars demand that any new deal be concluded quickly, he said, an ongoing refusal to engage could push Trump toward initiating the process of terminating NAFTA.

“You can only slow-walk a negotiation for a short period of time,” he said. “At some point I think Canada and Mexico are going to have to react to the U.S. proposals, even if it’s to say, ‘I’m sorry they’re totally unacceptable. And if that’s your final line, we’re done.’ But I don’t think anybody wants to be there yet.”

This round appeared to be designed to lower the rhetorical temperature after an October round that ended with Freeland and Lighthizer exchanging accusations in Washington. Neither of them was present in Mexico City.

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A sixth round of talks is scheduled for Washington in December. The negotiators will then move to Montreal in January.

Flavio Volpe, president of Canada’s Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, applauded the Canadians’ decision to present facts about the destructive potential of the U.S. auto proposal rather than put forward a counterproposal. He said the move could set the stage for productive “sleeves-up” negotiating at the next round.

“If they reject the premise, I’m not sure where that leaves us. But I’m confident they won’t reject the premise. The Canadian and Mexican arguments were fully based on quantitative arguments. It’s not how we feel. Everybody’s past feelings,” Volpe said.

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