Thursday, September 27, 2018

U.S. - Canada Relations Hit 'Rock Bottom' Over NAFTA



BBC: Nafta: Donald Trump says US 'not getting along' with Canada

Donald Trump has said he turned down a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, putting a damper on high hopes for trade renegotiations.

Mr Trump's comments were made as Nafta talks continue to drag on.

"I must be honest with you, we're not getting along at all with their negotiators," he said at a United Nations news conference in New York.

He took aim at the country's dairy tariffs and reiterated his threat to tax Canada's auto industry.

"We don't like their representative very much," he said, which some took to mean Canadian foreign minister Chrystia Freeland, who has been leading the charge to have a new deal in place.

Read more ....

Update #1: Trudeau rebuffs Trump's trade talks criticism -- AFP
Update #2: US Treasury Secretary confident Congress would pass NAFTA without Canada -- AFP

WNU Editor: I concur .... Don't expect a new NAFTA deal this week (Katie Lobosco, CNN)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let’s suggest the GOP wins big in November. No they hold service and keep both majorities. Trump wins a Mexico -USA trade deal. Then he moves on to UK-USA and USA-Japan trade deal and Canada sweats it out with no trade deal and high tariffs into the USA. How long Trudeau lasts?

Trudeau picked the wrong side. He’s stupid, arrogant and led by the nose. Plus a fool as he believed Obama.

B.Poster said...

Anon (10:27),

While we cannot "know" for certain how the elections will come out, we can make inferences based upon current trends. This is pretty much how I correctly predicted Trump would win the presidency. As such, to me it seems very likely that the Republicans win big in November. At the very least defeating the Republicanswill mean getting a sizeable segment of the population to somehow vote against their massive economic gains. Very respectfully this would seem to be a very daunting task.

I think you're spot on with regards to US-UK and US-Japan. I hope we can make a deal with Canada as we do respect and admire our northern beighbors very much. Unfortunately Trudeau went out of his way to try and humiliate Trump as he was leaving the trade negotiations to go to important negotiations with North Korea. Then the Canadian government appeared to back him essentially doubling down. As to why he did this, I could only speculate.

To say that this is bad optics to many Americans is an understatement. The Canadian government should begin with a sincere apology. As to how long Trudeau will last, this will be up to Canadians as we aren't going to interfere but it would seem having Canadian leadership who respects us and treats us as equals would be a huge improvement.

Finally, Trump is best understood as a counterpuncher. He seldom, if ever, throws the first "punch" but he does often respond to the attacker with often devestating effectiveness against the attacker. In attacking Trump, Trudeau picked a fight he doesn't appear to need and their seems to have been no good reason for it.