Goldman Sachs on NAFTA renegotiation - impact on CAD & MXN

Goldman Sachs Economics Research has used "simple text analysis" of comments from the public on the NAFTA renogiation

• The Trump administration recently announced its intention to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
• As part of that process, the US Trade Representative recently solicited comments from the public
• Using simple text analysis, we analyze those comments to measure sentiment across corporates and individuals, as well as identify particular industries that were frequently mentioned.
• We find that comments from companies and trade groups tend to be positive on the agreement, while individuals are much more negative.
• This is consistent with trade agreements having broad benefits but sharply penalizing some pockets of the population.

What GS see as implications:

• Our results are additive to our view that the renegotiation of NAFTA will probably result in only incremental changes - in part because corporations are likely to strongly oppose new barriers.
• From an investment standpoint, this supports our outlook that NAFTA re-negotiation is unlikely to be disruptive enough to fundamentally negatively affect MXN and CAD.

(bolding mine)