Arizona should view President Donald Trump's opening of a 90-day consultation before renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as an “opportunity,” United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer recently said.

“Any talk of exiting NAFTA would have not only been unproductive, but it would have damaged our relationships with our friends and neighbors, Mexico and Canada, which happen to be Arizona’s top two trade partners respectively," Glenn Hamer, president and CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, wrote on the chamber's website. 

Arizona and its leaders work very closely with Mexico for trade and they want to see this agreement prosper, Hamer wrote. 

“We’re more than neighbors,” Gov. Doug Ducey said during the International State of the State event. “We should approach our relationship with a prevailing spirit of cooperation and a desire to promote prosperity throughout our entire region, and remind ourselves at every turn that trade should not be some abstract concept between international powers, but instead a real-life facilitator of relationships between buyers, sellers, entrepreneurs, and innovators.”

Because the agreement is 20 years old, NAFA needs updates, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-AZ, wrote in a letter to the USTR. 

“There are areas in which NAFTA will benefit from strengthening and modernization," Flake wrote.