VANCOUVER - A high-level meeting in Vancouver about the North American Free Trade Agreement is flying largely under the media radar as NAFTA gets hammered on the U.S. election hustings.
The so-called NAFTA Commission -- U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab, Mexico's Secretary of the Economy Edjuardo Sojo and International Trade Minister David Emerson -- is holding two days of discussions.
Spokespeople for Emerson and Schwab offered no detail about Monday's bilateral meetings, saying only that the two discussed food safety, intellectual property rights and softwood lumber -- subject of an U.S.-launched arbitration under the 10-month-old softwood lumber agreement.
A spokesman for Sojo could not be reached.
A news conference is scheduled for Tuesday.
The regular NAFTA Commission meetings don't generate much newsworthy heat at the best of times but the three have even less reason to open up.
Free trade is once again coming under fire in the presidential election campaign in the United States, NAFTA's centre of gravity.
The leading Democratic hopefuls all slammed the 1993 agreement during a labour-sponsored debate last week, calling for its reopening to entrench environmental and labour standards.
Senator Hillary Clinton, whose husband as president pushed NAFTA through Congress, declared the agreement had hurt American workers.
Rival Senator Barack Obama said if he won the 2008 vote he'd call "the president of Mexico, the president of Canada'' to amend NAFTA to incorporate labour agreements.
Senator John Edwards, trailing the frontrunners, has talked even tougher but stopped short of calling for NAFTA to be scrapped.
"People see an economic crisis on the horizon,'' said Liberal trade critic Navdeep Bains, referring to the ballooning U.S. trade deficit, the deepening mortgage crisis and housing slowdown.
"I think there seems to be a kneejerk reaction towards protectionism. The debates are a reflection of some of the concern that's been highlighted.''
None of this surprises veteran observers of the trade file.
American unions and the Democratic party's left wing are generally anti-free-trade but represent an important slice of the voter base for any presidential candidate, says Sidney Weintraub of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
But the eventual Democratic nominee is likely to follow tradition and move to a more moderate position, Weintraub said in an interview.
"I think it doesn't have too much traction,'' he said.
But an anti-trade position can pay off in the presidential primary elections that determine each party's nominee, said Prof. James Brander of the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business.
There aren't many people likely to vote for candidates favouring trade liberalization, said Brander.
"And there are a lot of people, especially on the left, who are unhappy about NAFTA and about trade liberalization, who will vote for a candidate who takes a strong position on that,'' he said.
An anti-trade position can pay off more in the primaries, which draw more actively partisan voters than the general election itself, said Brander.
The danger, said Weintraub, is if candidates find themselves locked into commitments they make during the primaries.
Republician candidates are generally anti-protectionist but from their underdog position going into 2008 are unlikely to stump for more liberalized trade.
They face their own threat from the party's right wing, where anti-immigration elements have allied with anti-trade Democrats on the job-loss issue.
"It's not trade that they're worried about as much as it is immigration and having a single market,'' said Weintraub.
Bains said the Liberals, who finalized and signed NAFTA, believe the agreement has benefited Canada.
But the party has no objection to adding tougher labour and environmental standards to NAFTA.
"We would love to enhance any of those issues when it comes to environmental standards, when it comes to health standards and standards when it comes to working conditions,'' he said.
"I don't know if opening the agreement is the way to go about it. Maybe other side deals might be a possibility. When you open it up, further expectations are created.''
