On NAFTA, President Trump varies somewhat from candidate Trump

March 31 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump this week took the first of what is expected to be many steps in fulfilling a central campaign promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, releasing a draft of the broad goals for those talks to some members of Congress.

The administration's first signal on how it will approach one of the most important issues of the 2016 campaign appears more moderate than the rhetoric Trump used during the race, when he called NAFTA "the worst trade deal in history." Other parts are taken straight from his campaign playbook.

Here is a look at what Trump promised in the campaign, what the first draft of goals includes and where the process will go from here.

Campaigning in poetry, governing in prose

Former N.Y. Gov. Mario Cuomo coined perhaps the most elegant description of the challenges of living up to campaign promises when he observed: "You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose."

It is an admission of the difficulty in translating stump speech sound bites into policies that can win approval from legislatures and stand up to judicial challenges.

In the case of NAFTA, any deal agreed to must do so in three countries -- the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Trump made NAFTA, which was negotiated and signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1994, a regular campaign punching bag.

"I'm going to tell our NAFTA partners that I intend to renegotiate the terms of that agreement to get a better deal by a lot -- not a little, a lot -- for our workers. And if they don't agree to a renegotiation, which they might not ... then I will submit under Article 2205 under the NAFTA agreement that America intends to withdraw from the deal."

On this most basic point, Trump appears to have won. Wary Trump could follow through on his promise and scrap NAFTA entirely, both Canada and Mexico have signaled their willingness to revisit the agreement. Talks appear on schedule, possibly as early as this summer.

Then there's the question of who Trump will empower to negotiate on behalf of the administration. He pledged those individuals would be "the toughest and smartest, and I know them all, trade negotiators to fight on behalf of American workers."

He has announced Robert Lighthizer, a former trade lobbyist and veteran of past Republican administrations' trade negotiations, as the U.S. trade representative. Lighthizer has a reputation as tough, to be sure. During a Reagan-era negotiation with Japan, he once folded that nation's offer into a paper airplane and threw it across the table at Japan's lead negotiator. Was it smart? Apparently. Japan later caved to U.S. demands to stop flooding U.S. markets with low-cost steel, reducing their market share and making U.S. steel companies more competitive.

Lighthizer's confirmation has been held up in the Senate over potential conflicts with his lobbying work and he has yet to receive a vote.

Lighthizer's memorable snub to the Japanese came when he was a deputy trade representative, the grunts who do much of the in-person negotiating. None of those crucial second-level appointees have been named by Trump yet, and will still be subject to vetting and confirmation by the Senate.

Trump also promised he would "use every tool under American and international law to end these abuses."

If the first draft of his broad goals for renegotiating NAFTA are any indication, that remains up in the air.

The eight-page draft was circulated to leaders of the congressional committees that have oversight on trade. It included references to seeking open-ended authority to apply tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods if the countries do not make significant concessions.

During the campaign, Trump said he was open to canceling NAFTA and enacting a 35 percent tariff on many Mexican goods. His first draft seeks to negotiate what's known as "snap back" provisions that enable the parties to increase tariffs if imports have a negative effect on domestic businesses.

It's unclear if Canada or Mexico would agree to that without similar U.S. concessions. Trump's draft says the administration will seek more access to Mexican and Canadian consumers, not less. Essentially, the draft indicates the administration wants Canada and Mexico to submit to higher tariffs on their exports, while subjecting their own businesses to increased competition from U.S. imports.

The draft also includes some moderate proposals that signal the domestic political reality that Democratic votes in Congress will be needed if a renegotiated NAFTA can pass. The draft includes Democratic priorities that are a holdover of the Obama administration's negotiations of the scuttled Trans-Pacific Partnership, which included Mexico and Canada. The provisions, which were not favored by Republicans, would require increasing labor standards and wages, and force more stringent environmental protections that U.S businesses would be subject to as well.

The existence of some of the core framework of Obama's TPP has set some anti-free traders on edge, especially after Trump pledged to scrap the deal in its entirety, which effectively happened anyway when Congress refused to take it up in Obama's final year in office.

The draft also makes no mention of currency valuation or manipulation, another Trump campaign target. When countries take steps to push down the value of their currency, that makes their goods cheaper and more profitable in foreign markets.

The economics of it are fairly simple: Imagine a hammer made in the United States that costs $1. If the peso and looney are worth 20 and 75 cents, respectively, that means U.S. consumers -- who make up the overwhelming buying power in North America -- can buy five times as many Mexican hammers or two Canadian hammers at a buy one/get one half-off price for the same amount as one made in the United States. Mexican manufacturers stand to benefit immensely as a result of currency valuations.

The Mexicans and Canadians have denied they are intentionally devaluing their currency and the U.S. Federal Reserve has taken steps recently to increase the dollar's value by raising domestic interest rates, further widening the gap. The draft of Trump's broad NAFTA renegotiation does not address the situation.

That last part, at least, could certainly change.

Where we go from here

White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked about the NAFTA draft Thursday after copies of it began surfacing in media reports. He batted down questions about whether Trump's trade position had softened, pointing out the draft is just that, a draft -- one that is subject to many changes as the process continues.

Spicer went as far as saying it does not represent "administration policy."

How it might change is a wide-open question subject to the same intense intra-party rivalries that sunk the GOP's attempt at healthcare reform. Hard line conservatives that oppose NAFTA have long been at odds with the more Wall Street-aligned wing of the party that supports free trade.

And while the administration gets to propose broad goals for trade negotiations, under the Constitution it is Congress that sets the parameters within which the administration must negotiate.

Though Democrats are the minority in both houses of Congress, they, too, will factor into the calculus on how far to push on NAFTA. Anti-free trade rhetoric was one of the few points of agreement between Trump Republicans and the Democrats who flocked to the liberal campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The ultimate goal for Trump: Craft a deal with the Mexicans and Canadians that is tough enough to satisfy a campaign promise of fundamentally changing NAFTA. Then sell it to some combination of lawmakers from across the U.S. political spectrum to win congressional approval.