NAFTA Renegotiation : Rules-Based or Outcomes-Based Trade?

The US negotiating objectives in the NAFTA renegotiation feature a puzzle: the main body of the text is grounded in familiar concepts of rules-based trade, under which trade agreements establish an enabling framework but leave it to the private sector to decide what trade actually takes place, but the preamble is grounded in mercantilism, which holds that exports are good (because they create jobs) and imports are bad (because the work goes to the foreign country). This note comments on this incongruity and what it portends for the NAFTA negotiations