The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that so far, the North American free-trade agreement talks initiated by the United States this summer have produced somewhat comforting news -- no big upsets and even progress on such things as digital trade. The Globe's guest columnist Nelson Cunningham writes that the hopes of progressive NAFTA reformers will run into the stern resolve of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, whose instructions to upend NAFTA are clear. In setting forth U.S. objectives for the talks last month, Mr. Lighthizer first reflected his President's focus, "Improve the U.S. trade balance and reduce the trade deficit with the NAFTA countries." The news release accompanying the written objectives trumpeted, "For the first time USTR has included deficit reduction as a specific objective for the NAFTA negotiations." Canada's trade with the United States is close to balanced. However, not so with Mexico, whose trade deficit with the United States is more than $60-billion (U.S.) annually. All other issues on the table pale in comparison to the challenge of fundamentally reshaping the U.S.-Mexico trading relationship to eliminate a deficit of that size.