Go ahead Donny... see how that works out.President Donald Trump said Thursday he’s still ready to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement if he can’t renegotiate better terms for the U.S. but that he decided to hold off on a decision after appeals from the leaders of Canada and Mexico.
“I was going to terminate NAFTA as of two or three days from now,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. But he said he reconsidered after Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau both phoned him Wednesday asking him to renegotiate the deal instead. Those talks will start as soon as today, he said.
Trump also said a quick U.S. withdrawal “would be a pretty big shock to the system.”
But Trump, who spoke as he met with visiting Argentinian President Mauricio Macri, added that “If I’m unable to make a fair deal for the United States--meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA.”
Mexico’s peso and Canada’s dollar jumped after a White House announcement Wednesday that Trump would renegotiate the trade treaty rather than end it.
Trudeau said at a news conference in Saskatchewan that he told Trump withdrawing from Nafta would cost U.S. jobs. He declined to specify what Canada’s demands would be in trade negotiations.
“Obviously, Canada is always going to stand up and defend Canadian interests,” he said.
Trump on the campaign trail last year made a hawkish vow to pull out of Nafta -- which he repeatedly called the “worst trade deal ever” -- if the U.S. didn’t get a better deal through immediate renegotiation. His decision Wednesday marks a continuing softening of his rhetoric on trade, after he recently said he would not declare China a currency manipulator, another campaign promise.
Advisers’ Debate
Trump’s top advisers had been embroiled in a debate over how aggressively to proceed on reshaping U.S. participation in Nafta, with hard-liners favoring a threatened withdrawal as soon as this week and others advocating for a more measured approach to reopening negotiations with Canada and Mexico.
Some of Trump’s advisers wanted a dramatic move before Trump’s 100th day in office on Saturday to fulfill a key campaign promise, while others said he could let the milestone pass and revisit the issue later through more formal procedures, according to two White House officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Watching this intellectual lightweight work through the steep learning curve is painful. "who knew it was complicated?"
Last edited by RandomGuy; 04-20-2018 at 03:51 PM. Reason: updated picture
https://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-tradeU.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has been considering a combative strategy to compel Congress to approve a new NAFTA deal this year — withdrawing from the existing pact to force a vote on a new one, according to current and former administration officials.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...pot-with-nafta“Since 1993, the year before the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, per capita gross domestic product in Mexico is up about 26 percent in real terms. That’s a lot better than the outright decline in per capita GDP that the country had experienced over the course of the 1980s. But it’s nowhere close to the 41 percent gains in real GDP per capita experienced by Canada and the U.S., the other signatories of Nafta, 1 not to mention China, where GDP per capita is up more than 600 percent since 1993.”
(shrugs)
it. I hope they do it.
Let the Trump administration add another turd to the pile they have left on the collective bed. What's one more?
At this point, given the cult of personality that has sprung up around Trump, and the outright echo chamber that so many live in, only true economic pain will penetrate that fact-proof shield.
From a cost/benefit perspective, the damage would be worth it to get through to the people who voted for Trump just how ignorant and destructive he and his policies truly are.
I can't think of any historical examples to support the worse to get better hypothesis. Can you, RG?
Trump: may tie Mexican immigration control to NAFTA
President Donald Trump threatened to make Mexican immigration control a condition of a new NAFTA agreement on Monday, saying the southern U.S. neighbor must stop illegal immigrants from getting into the United States.
"Mexico, whose laws on immigration are very tough, must stop people from going through Mexico and into the U.S.
We may make this a condition of the new NAFTA Agreement,"
Trump wrote in a Twitter post. "Our Country cannot accept what is happening!"
The U.S. president made similar threats linking NAFTA, known formally as the North American Free Trade Agreement, and immigration when a "caravan" of migrants moved through Mexico earlier this month. "They must stop the big drug and people flows, or
I will stop their cash cow, NAFTA,"
Trump wrote on Twitter on April 1.
However, discussion of immigration controls has not been a part of formal negotiations on the new NAFTA accord and talks by all accounts - including Trump's - are progressing.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...fta/ar-AAwezpw
Trash, what a superlative negotiator, convincing, successful deal-maker. Just bully, threaten, extort, then punish the other side anyway.
Trump Is Right About NAFTA, But That Doesn’t Make Him Pro-Worker
Trump's opposition to the agreement is a cynical ploy to grab working-class votes.
As a deadline for NAFTA negotiations set by House Speaker Paul Ryan came and went on May 17,
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin now says that
the negotiations are still alive and might even extend into next year.
By delaying NAFTA talks until after the November election, however,
the GOP could avoid an awkward situation
in which most of the NAFTA revisions demanded by Trump’s negotiators are supported by labor and the Democrats and opposed by big business-friendly Republicans.
It is another case of Trump trying to steal the liberals’ clothes with a working-class base that once reliably supported Democrats but now is more inclined to back Trump.
http://prospect.org/article/trump-right-about-nafta-doesn%E2%80%99t-make-him-pro-worker
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