should nafta be renegotiated every five years?

well, it makes sense to me to suggest it should be re-evaluated on some regular basis of time, yes - although i don't know how important a five year interval is, or how appropriate the term "renegotiate" is.

one of the weird things about this process is how much pomp it's requiring, and we may be the ones going the furthest overboard. i understand why the government of canada is a little reluctant to have it's ministers of trade & foreign policy tied up in permanent trade negotiations with it's closest ally. the government is handling this at it's highest level because it sees it as of the utmost importance. but, maybe periodic reviews could be handled by the ambassador in the future, or even delegated to a separate department. there are going to be corruption & capture issues present, but we know the ministers are relying very heavily on their aides, anyways; enough that the necessity of this layer of formality is maybe up for some question.

that said, the american side is really not projecting the kind of trust required to institutionalize something that probably ought to be, at this point. trump may be technically right to make the request, but trudeau's reaction is not irrational, and the nature of it is, in large part, trump's actual own fault. i know trump likes to try and push his "partners" around. but, as a sovereign country, we would like to trust our allies and other partners we make agreements with - and i think that's reasonable.

if some resolution to the current reciprocity dispute presents itself soon, there will no doubt be further discussions again at some point in the future, and i would actually support periodic review being implemented at that time on something like a fifteen or twenty year period - but certainly not a less than eight year period, or one that appears to be designed for the american election cycle.