President Donald Trump rushes to Twitter far more often than he seems to rush to a negotiating table. Trade negotiations between the U.S. and Canada are continuing as the days — and weeks — go on, and now, this Saturday afternoon, Trump has again taken to Twitter to rant.
He wrote, in part:
‘There is no political necessity to keep Canada in the new NAFTA deal. If we don’t make a fair deal for the U.S. after decades of abuse, Canada will be out. Congress should not interfere w/ these negotiations or I will simply terminate NAFTA entirely & we will be far better off.’
As he indicates, negotiations centering on the future of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are currently underway. NAFTA as it stands at present includes the three major North American countries Canada, Mexico, and the United States. This past Monday, Trump announced that his administration had reached a deal with Mexico to move forward on trade issues — but one with Canada hasn’t emerged yet.
Involved parties set a tentative deadline of last Friday for a U.S./Canada deal on the future of NAFTA to emerge, but that dream didn’t materialize. On Friday — the day of the deadline — angry comments directed at Canada that Trump made to Bloomberg reporters leaked.
He’d told them that he was unwilling to make any concessions with Canada — at all, which is reminiscent of plenty of his past empty angry posturing. (He’s also said, for instance, that he’s going to put up a U.S./Mexico border wall. Where’s that?)
The thing is, Trump’s not the one at the negotiating table.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, who’s in part handling trade negotiations with the U.S., brushed off the president’s antagonism.
She commented:
‘My negotiating counterparty is [U.S. Trade Representative Robert] Lighthizer. He has brought good faith and good will to the table.’
Trump’s like a sports fan standing on the sidelines throwing various items onto a field with little to no understanding of how the game is actually played.
For one, although there might be no supposed “political necessity” for Canada to be included in a new NAFTA, there might be a legal one. When the Trump administration first notified Congress that they intended to renegotiate the terms of the landmark agreement, they said they’d be working with Mexico and Canada. Congress has an oversight responsibility for any pending trade agreements, and it’s hardly a given that they’ll get on board with trade plans that break up decades of North American free trade.
Trump seems to anticipate this, threatening to withdraw from NAFTA altogether if Congress doesn’t sit back and stay quiet. Strictly speaking, withdrawing from the deal as a whole won’t erase its impacts because at least some of the implementing legislation will remain intact. Still, overall, Trump does technically have power to withdraw from the deal (although the process would take six months), but the legal challenges would no doubt be immense.
In short, it’s unclear — yet again — that anything productive will come from the president’s angry ranting.
Check out Twitter’s response below.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
