Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 11/14/17

The fifth round of the NAFTA renegotiation is set to officially start on Friday in Mexico City, but negotiators will actually begin talks two days earlier, to squeeze in some technical meetings on Wednesday and Thursday. Don't expect ag to factor heavily into the two-day prelude; those meetings will feature discussions on textiles, labor, cross-border trade and intellectual property, according to a tentative schedule described to Pro Trade's Megan Cassella. The majority of the thorny issues will likely be put off until later in the round, which is scheduled to close out on Nov. 21. 

Trump's new timeline: The administration hopes to wrap up the 2.0 talks by the end of March, to avoid running into trouble with the political calendar in all three countries as well as side-stepping the potential expiration of U.S. trade promotion authority. 
"There is no precise date by which the negotiations must end," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said during a speech to the U.S.-Japan Council on Monday. "But as a practical matter, if there's no resolution by more or less the end of March, the political calendar will make it very difficult to complete a deal."

That timeline would leave negotiators with little more than four months to see their way through the sixth and seventh negotiating rounds, which were put off until early 2018 when Round 4 ended in an impasse. The chief negotiators are also scheduled to meet in Washington, D.C., next month.

Chamber demands that U.S. drop withdrawal talk: Neil Herrington, U.S. Chamber Vice President for the Americas, said during an AmCham Canada event in Toronto on Monday that an updated NAFTA was still "attainable, but only if the U.S. takes withdrawal off the table and reverses course on proposals categorically opposed by U.S. agricultural and business interests small and large."

"What's clear is that withdrawal or pursuit of ... objectionable proposals threatens not only the heartland and rust belt economies so critical to U.S. growth, but also the very states, regions and constituents that helped elect the president," he said.

Majority of Americans say NAFTA is good for U.S.: A new Pew Research Center survey found that 56 percent of Americans believe NAFTA has benefited the U.S., while a third believe it has been a bad deal for the country. Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say the pact has hurt the U.S. and helped Mexico.