Too funny… this is what we would call a win/win. President Trump delivering remarks to the media aboard Air Force One on the flight back to the U.S.
(Via Associated Press) President Donald Trump says he will shortly be providing formal notice to Congress that he will terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement, giving lawmakers six months to approve the replacement he recently signed.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One while returning to Washington from Argentina, Trump says: “I will be formally terminating NAFTA shortly.”
Seeking to gain leverage with skeptical lawmakers to approve the revised trade pact, Trump says Congress “will have a choice” as it considers the agreement he signed with the leaders of Mexico and Canada on Friday during the Group of 20 summit.
He says they can choose between the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement or “pre-NAFTA, which works very well.”
Trump has made renegotiating NAFTA a centerpiece of his presidency. (link)
The USMCA is structurally more beneficial to the U.S. and Mexico than Canada.
Factually, it was the U.S. and Mexico who wrote the agreement, and Canada joined in only to mitigate their losses after the majority growth architecture was constructed. There is almost nothing inside the USMCA agreement which structurally expands the Canadian economy; it is a very weird trade-dynamic.
It was the exploitative nature of the NAFTA construct that benefited Canada and Mexico to the detriment of the United States. As a result, President Trump is OK with the final USMCA result which removes the majority of the parasitic benefits; and he is ok with no USMCA and no NAFTA, and a return to pre-NAFTA trade structures.
Like NAFTA the USMCA is a “trade agreement”, with various opt-out initiatives for any party; it is not a trade “treaty” – and therefore only requires a simple majority vote.
President Trump and USTR Lighthizer really have created a Win/Win.
…”He says [congress] can choose between the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement or “pre-NAFTA, which works very well.””..
Damnedest thing ever.
You could hope it passes; or hope it fails – the end result is similar.
