Trump to tackle NAFTA on Day 1

Canada said this month it would set up an infrastructure bank with access to C$35 billion ($26 billion) to help fund major projects and the country is also seeking private investors.

The discussion on Canada-U.S. relations will continue in Waterloo Region on December 8 when our Chamber will be hosting Michael Wilson, former Canadian Ambassador to the United States, to provide the final address in our three part U.S. Presidential Election Distinguished Speaker Series. The Americans had been in talks with the European Union since 2013, but Europe’s top trade official said Friday she didn’t realistically see the talks resuming any time soon, according to the Wall Street Journal. Trump already is getting unsolicited advice from business interests urging him to rethink his opposition to the 1994 treaty.

Indeed, they suggest the USA president-elect is somewhat off base, leading BMO Nesbitt Burns to ask how NAFTA can possibly be an “existential threat” to the American economy. “We need to be looking for ways of improving the relationship, as opposed to scrapping it”.

“This is about education”, MacNaughton said, adding nine million jobs in the USA directly depend on trade with Canada and 35 states have Canada as their leading trade partner. “The Trump administration will reverse decades of conciliatory trade policy”. Meanwhile, products made within the trade zone would get preferential treatment over those made overseas, he said.

“A stronger North America, if you are anxious about China, is a much better bulwark than a divided, weak, economically compromised North America”, said Fen Hampson, a professor of worldwide affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa.

“Make no mistake”, he said.

“I understand why the workers in the rust belt are furious about the trade deals because it is crystal clear that Mexico has undermined the standard of living for American and Canadian workers, so they’re frustrated”, Dias said.

“I think one of the possibilities is that the statements made in the election campaign against things like TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) and NAFTA were particularly a directive against predatory activities by some of the countries that America deals with, but I don’t think they include Canada”, de Jong stated.

“They want to manage the trade”, he told reporters after his speech. The title of his talk is “Perspectives on NAFTA”.

A senior Ontario cabinet minister says it’s too soon to worry about Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric against NAFTA and other trade agreements. He called NAFTA a “disaster” in 2015, and said he would rip it up or renegotiate it if he ever won power. “I do think theres going to be some sort of renegotiation, ” he said. The primary reason is that the economies and the political systems of the US and Canada are essentially the same so it is a level playing field – unlike Mexico where the labor is cheap and the government has traditionally been for sale. It would require loads of American businesses bringing existing components of their supply chains and outsourced services back onshore to avoid tariffs or other penalties – a process that takes time and money. It’s a key element of USA energy security.

In a letter headed by U.S. Sens. So much for all this fear and loathing of Trump and suggestions that reopening NAFTA would be akin to careening off a trade cliff. Kearns offered some possibilities.

Among his campaign promises, Trump has vowed to remove illegal immigrants, repeal Obamacare, ban Muslims, defund Planned Parenthood, end gun-free zones, suspend Syrian refugee resettlement, appoint a conservative pro-life Supreme Court justice, and build a great, big, handsome wall between Mexico and the United States. Right now, for the most part, the less said the better.

But Trump went much further. He said imposing a Value-Added Tax at the border, similar to a tariff, would level the playing field.

Imagine a Canada of the mid 21st century that is 100 million strong, where a second bilingual, multi-ethnic Canada has been constructed in the mid-zone, the warming heartland that lies north of present Canadian population. Perhaps as important as trade deals are the appointees with responsibility over trade policy, Kearns.

What’s more, Hampson said, there is little evidence that jobs will return if free trade is scrapped. Kearns said those officials need to be aggressive in responding to threats like currency manipulation by foreign governments and unfair trade practices.

“Every negotiator knows the good-cop, bad-cop strategy”, he said.