After canceling the last round of formal negotiations, U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer elected to hold a series of ministerial meetings on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Some officials have suggested that the United States, Mexico and Canada could reach a deal in principle within days, but President Trump tempered the anticipation somewhat when he said on Thursday that “we’ll have something, I think, fairly soon” but “there’s no rush.”

The president is right that the NAFTA renegotiation should not be rushed. It should also not be held hostage by the administration’s arbitrary steel and aluminum tariff exemption deadline of May 1. That deadline was mistakenly used earlier. The White House pushed South Korea to agree to a steel import quota during the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) negotiations.

But manufacturing supply chains within NAFTA depend much more on the free flow of vital intermediate goods, like steel and aluminum. The president’s tariffs should be addressed separately from overall NAFTA negotiations. As U.S. negotiators prepare to work out the remaining issues within NAFTA, including rules of origin and the mechanisms for settling disputes between nations and foreign investors, they should keep these five guiding principles in mind.

Advance the freedom to trade for all Americans

The Heritage Foundation’s annual Index of Economic Freedom finds that countries with higher levels of trade freedom are more prosperous. When individual Americans can buy and sell free of external barriers and extra taxes on imports, their purchasing power increases. The same is true for businesses that utilize imports to make their finished goods more competitive for international trade.

Eliminate additional tariff and nontariff barriers

The United States failed to fully achieve this goal in the new KORUS agreement, which extended the 25 percent tariff on trucks for an additional 20 years. Given the importance of automotive supply chains in North America, protectionist tariffs like this should remain dormant under a new NAFTA. All countries in the agreement should be jettisoning trade barriers. The United States should lead this effort by eliminating existing domestic tariffs and subsidies.

Ensure rights of American investors are upheld

Despite rhetoric from the administration criticizing the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement provisions in free trade agreements, no significant changes were made to the process in KORUS. That was a wise decision, and the administration should adhere to this policy for NAFTA. An an investor-state dispute settlement agreement that leaves out the United States, or is optional for member countries, puts American businesses and investors at a huge disadvantage.

NAFTA must not increase manufacturing burdens

Rules of origin remain a wildcard issue within the NAFTA negotiations. A new proposal would shift rules of origin practices to a “focused regional value content” framework. The current framework would “rank components based on their importance to a vehicle,” but the United States is also pushing for the new framework to increase the rules of origin threshold to 85 percent and include wages in the equation. In this case, the U.S. goal should be to make it easier for automotive supply chains to work, not make it more difficult.

Deal should be about trade rather than regulation

Since NAFTA, free trade agreements have increasingly included chapters on other issues, such as labor and environmental standards. A true trade agreement focuses on eliminating tariffs and nontariff barriers. At the very least, U.S. negotiators should not allow previous NAFTA side agreements on these topics to become part of the full agreement.

The United States, Mexico and Canada still have a large number of issues to finalize. If wrapping up the NAFTA negotiations is rushed, Americans could end up with a deal similar to the new KORUS agreement, which hit the nail on the head in some areas while increasing domestic trade barriers in others. The goal of negotiators should simply be to increase the freedom of Americans to buy and sell around the world with the fewest possible barriers.