The President of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, says the defeat of Alabama’s Roy Moore, in this week’s special senate election, raises faint hopes that reluctant Republicans may be emboldened to speak out in support of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Perrin Beatty says the election result resonated in meetings he had this week in New York with his American business counterparts.

Moore had the strong backing of Trump but still lost and that’s widely seen as a rejection of Trump’s agenda, which includes tearing up NAFTA if he can’t get concessions out of Canada and Mexico.

Democrat Doug Jones won the election by a 1.5% margin in a race that was dominated by accusations of decades-old sexual misconduct against Moore. Moore has refused to concede and says the election was about the financial and moral direction of the United States.