Earlier today President Trump hosted a roundtable discussion with law enforcement, Homeland Security, border security and immigration officials.

[White House] A THREAT TO AMERICAN COMMUNITIES: MS-13 has brought violence, fear, and suffering to communities across the country.

• MS-13, short for Mara Salvatrucha, is a violent transnational gang primarily composed of immigrants or descendants of immigrants from El Salvador.
• MS-13’s motto is “mata, viola, controla” which means “kill, rape, control.”

They commit shocking acts of violence to instill fear, like machete attacks, execution-style murders, gang rape, and human trafficking.
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President Trump will pull the U.S. out of NAFTA and direct the U.S. Trade Representative to engage in bilateral trade deals with Canada and Mexico individually.   There is no other possible alternative and here’s why.

First, the essential problem with NAFTA was an evolution over time.  In its current form NAFTA became an exploited doorway into the coveted U.S. market.  Asian economic interests, large multinational corporations, invested in Mexico and Canada as a way to work around any direct trade deals with the U.S.
By shipping parts to Mexico and/or Canada; and by deploying satellite manufacturing and assembly facilities in Canada and/or Mexico; China, Asia and to a lesser extent EU corporations exploited a loophole.  Through a process of building, assembling or manufacturing their products in Mexico/Canada those foreign corporations can skirt U.S. trade tariffs and direct U.S. trade agreements.  The finished foreign products entered the U.S. under NAFTA rules.
Why deal with the U.S. when you can just deal with Mexico, and use NAFTA rules to ship your product directly into the U.S. market?
This exploitative approach, a backdoor to the U.S. market, was the primary reason for massive foreign investment in Canada and Mexico; it was also the primary reason why candidate Donald Trump, now President Donald Trump, wanted to shut down that loophole and renegotiate NAFTA.
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Oh dear, Prime Minister Rainbow Sparkle-Socks is issuing threats now.

“We aren’t going to take any old deal,” Trudeau said Friday at a town hall in Nanaimo, British Columbia. “Canada is willing to walk away from Nafta if the United States proposes a bad deal.
We won’t be pushed around.” (link)

The backdrop is important context here.  Prime Minister Twinkles has been watching Trump, Ross, Mnuchin and Lighthizer closely.  Two months ago Twinkles attempted to launch economic leverage by entering direct trade discussions with China; but there’s a problem – Twinkles actually believes Beijing is ‘playful panda’.  PM Rainbow-brite doesn’t grasp that Playful Panda is a mask.  [Wrong place for leverage.]
Trudeau is willing to open his door to Chairman Xi without realizing once inside Beijing will hold open the door for arriving goods, and shuttle out the Canadian manufacturers. Attachment to China is a one-way proposition; and China only indulged Canada from the context of using the Canadian NAFTA door, as a tariff workaround to gain entry to the U.S. market.
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NAFTA renegotiation round six ended yesterday in Canada will no substantive progress on the most contentious trade issues.  One negotiation chapter on corruption was closed, but there was little to no agreement on much else.
Each of the primary Trade Representatives gave a closing statement at the conclusion of Round #6.  U.S.T.R. Lighthizer blasted Canada for attempting to inject schemes, fraud and deceptive dealing within the negotiations. Princess Rainbow Sparkles from Canada tried to pretend the Canadian proposal was realistic.  It was all awkward.  Hopefully President Trump will soon get us out of this nonsense. Lighthizer Transcript below video:

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Ambassador Lighthizer: It is a pleasure to be here in Quebec. Montreal is one of the great cities of the world, and I have not been back in many years, and I’ve missed it. I used to come here in the 70s and 80s with my wife and children to go to Mont-Tremblant and learn how to ski. We loved the French culture, we loved the excellent food, the wonderful skiing and as I recall, it was cold all the time. That hasn’t changed at least.
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Round six of NAFTA renegotiation talks continue today as Canada and Mexico claim cautious optimism that a round seven will take place.  This round of talks is scheduled to continue through Monday and end with a much anticipated a joint press conference between Ildefonso Guajardo (Mex), Chrystia Freeland (Can) and U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer.   There were seven rounds initially scheduled.
Canada and Mexico are trying to close less important, and less controversial, trade chapters in an effort to give the illusion of progress and frame a political narrative that lends itself toward continuing to talk; ie. round seven.
However, if there’s no significant progress on the larger issues it’s doubtful Lighthizer will find value in endless words that amount to nothing.
Canada and Mexico have been lobbying U.S. politicians hard to retain their parasitic trade positions.  Additionally, a significant number of Washington DC politicians are willing to take massive bribes from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyists and support the export of American economic jobs and wealth.   This is another key UniParty indulgence issue.
Big Corporate Agriculture (Big AG), the consortium of massive multinational agriculture companies who hold stakes in the entire continent, are pushing hard to keep their “controlled market” dominance in place, and is attempting to stoke fears using false claims about farms and negative trade impacts to farmers.  Pure nonsense.
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Congressional Democrats have staked out a position of shutting down the government if they do not get a DACA amnesty deal.
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was the Obama “executive action” that deferred deportation of illegal aliens placing them in a suspended status awaiting immigration legislation. DACA applied to ‘childhood arrivals‘.
DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans) applied to their parents and families. DAPA was determined by Federal Courts, including SCOTUS, to be unconstitutional.
A court challenge on DACA would likely find the same legal outcome as DAPA. Unable to defend DACA in court, President Trump gave congress six months to negotiate legislation to address the underlying issue prior to enforcement of existing law (deportation). The Democrat “fix” is to grant immigration amnesty to the DACA recipients.
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The recently passed Tax Bill continues to enhance the MAGAnomic policy of the Trump administration, leading to more great economic and jobs news amid the headlines.
Do the math.  The three single-day announcements below will add more than 6,500 new jobs, average around $50,000 per job, and contribute tens-of-billions to a revitalized new America-First economy.  This is MAGAnomics in action.  This is a direct result of economic policies initiated by President Trump.  This is part of the reason why the U.S. GDP will easily exceed 4% growth in the next three years of Trump’s first term.

Economic Nationalism – America’s largest private employer, Walmart, has announced their plan to increase their minimum wage to $11/hr and give out bonuses between $200 to $1,000 to each of their more than one million employees:

CNBC – […] “We are early in the stages of assessing the opportunities tax reform creates for us to invest in our customers and associates and to further strengthen our business, all of which should benefit our shareholders,” he added. “However, some guiding themes are clear and consistent with how we’ve been investing — lower prices for customers, better wages and training for associates and investments in the future of our company, including in technology.”

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Oh, go figure.  They re-cog-o-nized that all by themselves…
Yesterday CTH noted Princess Rainbow Sparkles was in Washington DC lobbying Washington State Representative Dave Reichert, Senator Jeff Flake, Senator Lindsey Graham, et al. Isn’t it funny how Canadian officials lobby U.S. representatives for their unique economic interests, but if a U.S. official stepped into Canada to lobby one of their members of Parliament,… yikes, heaven forbid. Foreign election conspiracy. I digress.

Reuters is reporting today that Canadian trade officials are increasingly convinced that President Trump is going to pull out of NAFTA.  The next round of negotiations is scheduled for the end of this month.  Half of the Canadian contingent thinks Trump will exit, the other half think the appearance of a pull-out is simply a negotiating strategy.
An official WH source “close to Trump” is attributing a statement to POTUS: “I want out”.
Ya think?  Scott Minerd, Global Chief Investment Officer at Guggenheim Partners, said “if Trump were to announce a NAFTA exit, the stock market would probably pull back by 5 percent or so, before advancing to new highs.”  He’s correct.
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Earlier today President Trump held a meeting today with Democrat and Republican Senators surrounding one of the most controversial issues in the current body politic. The DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and immigration reform, to include a border wall and an end of chain-migration policy, is a hot button issue on both sides of the political aisle.
President Trump surprised the entire MSM by allowing the media to stay in the meeting for an hour and hear the arguments/positions from all participants at the meeting. Extreme transparency.

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Earlier today President Trump held a meeting on immigration policy with key administration officials and members of congress. (Video and Transcript Below)

[Transcript] THE PRESIDENT: Important meeting. Thank you very much for being here. We’re making a lot of progress on a lot of different things.
Today, I’m with the Senate working group on immigration. It’s become a very big subject. I think that started around November 8th, and maybe a year and a half before that, starting with the campaign.
We’re all working in an effort to develop an immigration reform plan that will serve the interests of the American workers and the American families and safety.
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