First of all, I think you're right that there is concern—that I have perceived—about the way in which NAFTA could be exploited by outside trading partners in a way that the biggest market would feel would be at its disadvantage. I think that's the right thing to look at.
Frankly, I don't know how great the problem is. One should look at it and see if it really is serious. If it is that serious, then there will to be some remedies. Maybe the remedies you're talking about are the ones that should be looked at. Certainly some of them should be considered. I think the kind of openness you're talking about—the flexibility, the willingness to consider all other alternatives, to see where real problems exist and to try to deal with them—is important.
I would just say this. My perception of this government is that it is very concerned about non-tariff barriers wherever they occur, and particularly occur in Asia, but insofar as we're discussing NAFTA, that would be looked at as well.
What are non-tariff barriers? Well, I don't know. They're all kinds of things. They're everything from regulations to fiscal policy to a host of things. But one should recognize that these people are business people. They're not academics. They're not theorists. They're solid business people. Some of them are in businesses that are having a pretty rough time.
I'm not sure the solutions are out there. I looked at the difference in the labour costs between China and the United States and Canada. Wow: they're enormous. How are you going to deal with all of that? That's the kind of thing they're trying to grapple with, to try to figure out a way to level the field. They want to bring business back into North America, including manufacturing business.
Let me just give you an example of how earnest they are. A study was done recently by Professor Blinder at Princeton. He's a labour economist. He argued in the study that in the near future, at least from his analysis model, 40 million jobs in the service industries, as far as the United States is concerned, will be offshored.
It's not just the Trump people who are concerned about this. A lot of other folks are too. I know that you are. So the openness that you're suggesting, of looking for solutions—that's really what has to happen here, I think.