Hello and welcome to another MLEX podcast. I'm Leah Nyland, MLEX's chief global antitrust correspondent.

And I'm Adam Siegel, Emlex's North America trade correspondent.

2017 was a year of big changes in the U.S. in large part because of the election of Republican

President Donald Trump, who took over in January. Donald Trump is pretty much the biggest thing

happening in the trade world right now. Adam, what is going on with all of the trade agreements that the US used to be involved in?

Well, we've had a couple of really big changes to trade agreements in the United States.

This was a really big deal, partly because the Obama administration had spent so long negotiating it,

but also partly because it was set to be a model for trade agreements

for the world over moving forward. The withdrawal really upset a number of U.S. trading partners,

including Canada and Mexico and Japan and Vietnam, and also really emboldened China to attempt

to reshape Asia in its own vision of what trade should look like.

One of the really big things during Donald Trump's campaign was the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA.

What's going on with the potential renegotiations?

This is a very good question, and we have a few potential outcomes that we might get.

We may have no change to NAFTA as a result of this. We may have a few potential outcomes that we might get. We may have no change to NAFTA

as a result of this. We may have a complete abrogation of the agreement. Everyone may just pull out.

Or we may have a totally new and changed agreement. And part of the reason that we don't really know what's happening is because

the parties have all tabled new things that they would like,

and they, no one can agree on what those things should be.

So for example, Canada has asked for a very strong series of protections for workers' rights,

labor protections for minimum wage, that type of thing.

And the Trump administration is on board for some of that,

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