U.S. President Donald Trump last week tweeted to warn Canada that it will be left out of any NAFTA replacement unless they are able to agree to a trade deal that is “fair” to the United States.
“There is no political necessity to keep Canada in the new NAFTA deal,” Trump tweeted on Saturday. “If we don’t make a fair deal for the U.S. after decades of abuse, Canada will be out.” A follow-up tweet called NAFTA “one of the WORST Trade Deals ever made,” alleging that it cost the U.S. “thousands of businesses and millions of jobs.”
There is no political necessity to keep Canada in the new NAFTA deal. If we don’t make a fair deal for the U.S. after decades of abuse, Canada will be out. Congress should not interfere w/ these negotiations or I will simply terminate NAFTA entirely & we will be far better off…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 1, 2018
A tentative bilateral trade deal between the U.S. and Mexico was struck toward the end of August, meaning that the U.S. is now ready to allow Canada to enter the trade negotiations. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland went to Washington to discuss that country’s role in the new regional trade agreement last week, but after four days of negotiations with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, she was unable to make any real headway.
On Friday, Donald Trump told Bloomberg that he was unwilling to make any concessions in the United States’ trade negotiations with Canada.
It’s still unclear whether the U.S. President would be permitted to strike a bilateral trade deal solely with Mexico, leaving Canada out of NAFTA’s replacement. Even if he is in theory, any NAFTA replacement would need to be ratified by Congress, and it’s reasonable to suspect many members wouldn’t be willing to exclude a longtime ally to the U.S.
General Motors currently has three active manufacturing plants in Canada: CAMI Assembly, Oshawa Car Assembly, and St. Catharines Propulsion. Together, those plants produce the Cadillac XTS, Chevrolet Equinox, Chevrolet Impala, Chevrolet Silverado, and GMC Sierra, as well as six-speed automatic transmissions and V6/V8 petrol engines.
(Source: The Detroit News)
Comment
Trudeau said that no deal is better than a bad deal; but one has to wonder whether Trudeau has thought things out especially if the Trump Administration offers a 12-month tariff exemption for any Canadian company that relocates to the United States as this would mean a disaster for Trudeau as the potential lost of tens of thousands of jobs can create a cascade effect that destroys Canada’s economy for decades.