I do not know what the negotiator said to you in reply, but the issue of the rules of origin is one of the reasons why I think that a large number of bilateral agreements are bad for international trade. It makes things much more complicated than the negotiation of a single set of rules for all the member states of the WTO. Now, we have dozens, even hundreds of different rules. Most of the time, they are similar, but they are not entirely identical in many cases and this fragments the market instead of uniting it.
On June 17th, 2010. See this statement in context.