News Analysis: U.S. businesses have mixed feelings on Trump's NAFTA renegotiation

As U.S. President Donald Trump starts his first month as leader of the world's largest economy, businesses have mixed feelings on his plans to renegotiate a deal that has been governing North American trade for two decades.

Trump recently announced he would seek to renegotiate North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), honoring one of his major campaign promises. While proponents say the deal has many benefits, including providing Americans with lower-cost consumer products, critics said it has contributed to a loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs.

Talks on the deal, which Trump has repeatedly said is bad for U.S. workers, will start next week with Trump's meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.

While many have blasted the new president with espousing what they call protectionism, there are mixed feelings among businesses.

Edward Mermelstein, international real estate lawyer at One & Only Realty Holdings, told Xinhua he believes NAFTA has been bad for the U.S. economy, arguing that the agreement has been "disadvantageous" to the U.S. economy.

"Renegotiating NAFTA in a way that would allow the U.S. economy to render some favorable positions rather than having the United States carry the burden on trade, would be a beneficial scenario for the U.S. economy going forward," Mermelstein said.

Renegotiating the deal would "increase jobs in the United States and benefit our economy, and all of those items would, for the most part, be beneficial to the real estate industry," he said.

"The idea as a whole would be that the current agreements -- and not only with our North American countries but also with trading partners in Europe and Asia -- would be fair game for a renegotiation," Mermelstein said.

The United States has seen "negative effects," including losses of jobs, from trade agreements that have been put in place over the last 20 years, he said.

"So the idea is to reinvigorate the manufacturing sector by renegotiating the trade agreements," he said.

But others are not so keen on what they believe is stifling free trade.

"Any kind of economic protectionism and attempt to stifle free trade is potentially not in the best interest of society in general," Phil Shawe, Co-CEO of TransPerfect, told Xinhua.

The company, which it claims to be the world's largest and most profitable privately owned translation service provider, operates in more than 100 countries with 4,000 employees.

"What would the cost to society be if people were paying 1,500 dollars for an iPhone instead of 600 dollars?" Shawe asked.

"There's a benefit to free trade that is maybe not being completely articulated when politicians are giving speeches," he said.

If the U.S. wants to bring jobs back, it should make sure that the jobs perform sophisticated, value added, highly educated positions so they can't be so easily off-shored, Shawe said.

"What I don't hear when I hear politicians talking about bringing manufacturing jobs back to America... is the cost to society," he said.

WHAT CHANGES TO NAFTA LIE AHEAD?

Despite much media attention to the NAFTA issue, specifics of any new deal remain unknown.

To reopen negotiations on NAFTA and stop U.S. businesses from shipping jobs to Mexico, Trump will have to make some concessions, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua.

"All this will be a contentious process and it is not clear what will come out of it," he said.

Dan Mahaffee, an analyst with the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, told Xinhua that negotiations could center on the desire of Trump and some others in the Republican Party (GOP) to consider some kind of import tax or border adjustment.

"Whether that could apply to existing free trade agreements is unclear. Furthermore, with Mexico, adjustments to NAFTA could serve as a bargaining chip to push on other negotiations regarding border security and migration," Mahaffee said.

GOP members of Congress will be skeptical of major changes to the trade deal, but the grassroots pressure to make some sort of adjustment is palpable, he said. Endit