Well, this is rich.  A Canadian labor union leader, Jerry Dias, national president of Unifor, has called President Trump “batshit crazy” yet supports the U.S. NAFTA position on Auto origination.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is said to be leveraging a position that NAFTA rules on auto manufacturing require 70% of source origination from inside the U.S., Mexico and Canada.  Canadian union leader Jerry Dias agrees with the position in order to Make Canada Great Again.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross wants more than 70 percent of North American content in vehicles built in the United States, Canada and Mexico under a renegotiated NAFTA trade deal, the head of Canada’s largest private sector union said on Friday.
Jerry Dias, national president of Unifor, told reporters he suggested in a recent meeting with Ross that the level be raised to 70 percent from the current 62.5 percent, and that the U.S. commerce secretary suggested a “more aggressive” level.

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Things are going swimmingly, strategically, seemingly according to plan.  When the full measure of history allows time to review, observers will note the strategic victory was achieved on August 5th, 2017; that’s the original date when Russia and China agreed to the U.N. Security Council sanctions against North Korea.  That first, historic, Russia and China U.N. Security Council vote against North Korea came as a result of eight months of assembled economic leverage created by President Donald Trump.
As a result of this ongoing strategy, every time North Korea’s Kim Jong-un takes an action, President Trump hits China’s Xi Jinping with an additional economic squeeze.  As Beijing feels the squeeze, they tell Kim Jong-un to act. Every time Kim Jong-un acts, President Trump squeezes Beijing with more economic pressure.  Wash-Rinse-Repeat.
Communist Beijing has boxed themselves into this inescapable cycle. The only way out of the box is to concede and lay the DPRK defeat at the feet of Kim Jong-un.  The conceding will evidence itself when Beijing inevitably calls for ‘Six Party Talks‘.  Today:

(Via Associated Press) Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi says his country will “fully and completely” abide by U.N. Security Council sanctions resolutions on North Korea.
Wang told reporters Wednesday China would work with other members of the council on how best to react to North Korea’s launch of a ballistic missile over Japan on Tuesday.
He says, “We will make a necessary response.”

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Mexico’s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo has a different perspective today than prior to the beginning of NAFTA renegotiation.
Before NAFTA round #1 began Minister Guajardo stated angrily if the U.S. did not concede to the demands of Mexico his government would flood the U.S. with drugs and illegal aliens.
However, in the face of actually seeing NAFTA discussions possibly leading to collapse, Mr. Guajardo has a change in tone.  The minister is looking at alternatives, bi-lateral trade deal options are analyzed, and the reality of the Mexican economic position is settling in.
What happens next? Mexican officials are dispatched to Washington DC to enlist the lobbying efforts of K-Street and their allies in the U.S. CoC.  “Halp“:

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico sees a serious risk the United States will withdraw from NAFTA and is preparing a plan for that eventuality, Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said on Tuesday, calling talks to renegotiate the deal a “roller coaster.”
[…]  “This is not going to be easy,” Guajardo said at a meeting with senators in Mexico City. “The start of the talks is like a roller coaster.”

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China, via Beijing’s communist old guard, has played right into the hands of the Trump administration by overreacting to the economic pressure of President Trump.  Beijing authorized an atomic elbow via another provocative North Korean missile test. However, their response now empowers the Trump administration to point out the terrible DPRK behavior and simultaneously take a higher diplomatic road.
President Trump, Secretary Tillerson and Secretary Mattis’s “Fire and Fury” approach was essentially a dynamic Win/Win.  By utilizing diplomacy (Tillerson/Haley) while constructing the appearance of military possibility (Mattis/McMaster), while simultaneously President Trump put the BIG geopolitical economic squeeze on China, team U.S.A. created a multidimensional box – and Beijing walked directly into the trap.

Unintentionally, China has now created a diplomatic ‘high-road’ path in response to the DPRK for the Trump administration.  China, seeking to retain position behind the curtain of the DPRK, will not be able to oppose, publicly or in the U.N., any U.S. and allied position now or they run the risk of the entire world seeing their controls over Kim Jong-un.  Notice the strategy in the well coordinated approach today:

President Trump Speaks To PM Shinzo Abe – President Donald J. Trump spoke yesterday with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan to address North Korea’s launch of a missile that overflew Japanese territory. The two leaders agreed that North Korea poses a grave and growing direct threat to the United States, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, as well as to countries around the world. President Trump and Prime Minister Abe committed to increasing pressure on North Korea, and doing their utmost to convince the international community to do the same. (LINK)

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There is an saying people use to criticize President Trump based on the people around him:

“People are policy, and policy is people”…

The basic argument is that Mr. Trump can be swayed or distracted from his mission by his staff and those he hires.
This is a common catch-phrase brought about by historic and conventional wisdom.  However, when applied to President Trump, it’s also just plain wrong.
No similar cliche is appropriate for Donald Trump, nothing deters or influences him from his larger decades-long ‘America-First’ economic strategy. Nothing.
Donald Trump is the policy. There’s no assembly of advisers on economic issues that can ever sway his instinct.
Example:

(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump last month rejected a Chinese proposal to cut steel overcapacity, despite the endorsement of some of his top advisers, the Financial Times said, citing people familiar with the matter.
Beijing proposed cutting steel overcapacity by 150 million tonnes by 2022 in a deal twice rejected by Trump, who instead urged advisers to find ways to impose tariffs on imports from China, the paper said, citing the sources.

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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appears on Fox News Sunday with guardian and gate-keeper of the swamp Chris Wallace.

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[Transcript] QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, welcome back to Fox News Sunday.
SECRETARY TILLERSON: Pleased to be here, Chris.
QUESTION: Before we get to foreign affairs, I want to ask you as a native son of Texas and as the former chairman of and CEO of ExxonMobil your thoughts about Hurricane Harvey and especially the impact it’s having in the oil and gas sector there on the Gulf coast.
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It must be pointed out; it is up to us to do so.  The corporate media are hopelessly deficient in their coverage and explanations of how strategic objectives for national security are being delivered through a Trump Doctrine via economic leverage.  The results are stunningly effective, yet few have noticed, and even fewer seem willing to articulate.

The latest example of the geopolitical Trump Doctrine in action comes via Venezuela, and in the wake of a fraudulent Maduro election – the Trump administration’s economic and financial policy delivering sanctions against the rogue Maduro regime:

(Via LA Times) The Trump administration on Friday slapped sweeping financial sanctions on Venezuela, barring banks from any new financial deals with the government or state-run oil giant PDVSA.
The sanctions Trump signed by executive order are bound to dramatically escalate tensions between Venezuela and the U.S. and exacerbate the country’s economic crisis.

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Being on the leading edge of history as it unfolds is a great deal of fun.  Everything is proceeding according to plan.  This is The Trump Doctrine playing out on the geopolitical stage and we all have references to smile about. Swimmingly.
Remember, when President Trump gave truthful, and rightful, ownership of the Muslim Brotherhood’s extremism to the Arab Gulf States? Their first response was to refute the position. Quickly they accepted reality; and now the GCC, led by Saudi Arabia, is confronting MB’s enabler, Qatar.
Remember, when President Trump gave truthful, and rightful, ownership of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions to China? The first response was Beijing refuting the position. Eventually they accepted reality; that process is ongoing.

On Monday President Trump gave truthful ownership of the Taliban to Pakistan. Well:

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistan has rejected U.S. criticism of its efforts to fight terrorism, saying it should not be made a scapegoat for the failure of the U.S. military to win the war in Afghanistan.
U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his policy for Afghanistan on Monday, stepping up the military campaign against Taliban insurgents and singling out Pakistan for harboring them.

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An interesting article in the Washington Times poses a possibility of President Trump holding a deconfliction summit with North Korea –SEE HERE– And that begs a question of whether or not it’s actually plausible. I would state unequivocally yes, and here’s why.
If you have followed the foreign policy pattern of President Trump you immediately recognize he does not restrain himself to DC political customs or DC political norms. Indeed as Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi optimistically noted, President Trump can accomplish many things because he brings a unique perspective to the world of policy and diplomatic engagement. Later repeating: “He Can Do The Impossible“.

Additionally since we originally outlined the likely scenario for a restart of the ‘six party talks‘ (China, South Korea, Russia, Japan and the U.S.), on August 13th, there has been some visible activity providing further evidence toward that end.
•Japan (Shinzo Abe) has stated they have “great confidence” in President Trump’s Asian national security approach. •South Korea (President Moon Jae-in) has stated they are “confident there will not be war again on the Korean peninsular“; •and they are willing to send a special envoy to North Korea to begin talks. •In addition, China has quietly removed the 71-year-old veteran diplomat, Wu Dawei, from the position of negotiator toward the DPRK, and replaced him with 58-year-old Kong Xuanyou. Kong is a long time Chinese diplomat in charge of Asian affairs and he speaks Korean.
All of this generally under-reported diplomatic activity has taken place within the past week while the American media was busy pushing Charlottesville narratives.  But more importantly this activity took place while President Trump directed USTR Lighthizer to begin a section 301 trade investigation into China.  POTUS Trump is ramping up the pressure on Chinese President Xi Jinping, but more specifically this action targets Beijing’s communist old guard who control both their economy and the DPRK behavior.
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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis release a joint Statement/Op-ed discussing North Korea and accountability.  However, against the backdrop of visible diplomacy the joint statement is more about terms, than accountability.
Note a pointed subtlety.  Secretary Tillerson lays down the terms to China; while Secretary Mattis lays down the terms to North Korea.

WASHINGTON – The U.S., its allies and the world are united in our pursuit of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.
In the past few months, multiple illegal North Korean ballistic-missile and ICBM tests—coupled with the most recent bellicose language from Pyongyang about striking the U.S., Guam, our allies and our interests in the Asia-Pacific region—have escalated tensions between North Korea and America to levels not experienced since the Korean War.
In response, the Trump administration, with the support of the international community, is applying diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea to achieve the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and a dismantling of the regime’s ballistic-missile programs. We are replacing the failed policy of “strategic patience,” which expedited the North Korean threat, with a new policy of strategic accountability.
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