Trump says he won't sign any NAFTA deal until after midterms

[DonViejo]

Source: The Washington Post



By Heather Long
July 1 at 11:26 AM

President Trump said Sunday that he is “not happy” with the revised NAFTA deal that his administration has been hammering out with Canada and Mexico and that he doesn't want to sign any new agreement until after the midterm elections in November.

The remarks were aired on “Fox News Sunday,” a critical day in the U.S. relationship with its neighbors as Canada started collecting tariffs on $12.6 billion worth of U.S. products to hit back at Trump and Mexican voters went to the polls to select a new president, who will play a key role in shaping any final NAFTA deal. Front-runner Andrés Manuel López Obrador is known for his populist policies.

“NAFTA, I could sign it tomorrow, but I’m not happy with it. I want to make it more fair, okay?” Trump told Fox News's Maria Bartiromo, adding that “I want to wait until after the election” to sign it.

Trump angered Canada and Mexico by imposing hefty tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the two countries, citing national security concerns. Those tariffs went into effect on June 1.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2018/07/01/trump-says-he-wont-sign-any-nafta-deal-until-after-midterms/

[dalton99a]

1. Eh, such a coward

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. This just seems to be Trump misleading everyone

It needs to go through Congress, and they'd already said there wasn't the time for that before the election. He's lying when he says "I could sign it tomorrow".

First the facts, then the spin. The NAFTA renegotiation talks have missed deadline after deadline. When they got underway in August, 2017, leaders said they had to conclude by the end of the calendar year to avoid the upcoming Mexican election. That endpoint, once it was missed, was then pushed back to the end of the first quarter of 2018 with the same rationale. Then, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) set a May 17 deadline for conclusion if the result were to be voted on by the current Congress. He later said there might be a couple additional weeks if key U.S. agencies worked unusually quickly.

All these deadlines have come and gone. The Mexican election is upon us (July 1). The requirements of U.S. trade negotiating authority mean that any agreement that needs congressional approval would have to await the new Congress elected this coming November. The timeline now looks horrible.

If anything, the substance of negotiations looks worse than the timeline. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reported a month ago that the United States had set a “sunset clause” as a precondition for further talks. This provision, which would set NAFTA on a path to self-destruct barring new action from the three governments, is anathema to Canada, Mexico, many in the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and others. And the United States Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, reiterated his commitment to this approach this past week. Beyond the sunset provisions, there are very difficult questions about Canadian dairy policy, Mexican auto wages, and even whether NAFTA should be a single agreement or broken up into pairwise agreements. On the substance, the negotiators do not appear to be close.
...
For anyone trying to ascertain where NAFTA negotiations are going, however, the Marxian question becomes: who are you going to believe – the Trump administration or your lying eyes?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/phillevy/2018/06/30/the-bizarre-confluence-of-nafta-optimism/#d3b204e62d59

[Maxheader]

3. How will cheetoz

I remember the idea was to create a level playing field...
Never liked the idea of taking american mfg out of the
country..and depending on reciprocation.

NAFTA came into effect on January 1, 1994, after it was signed on December 17, 1992 by:

US President George H.W. Bush
Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney
Mexican President Carlos Salinas

NAFTA stands for the North American Free Trade Agreement to lift tariffs (taxes on imports and exports) on virtually all goods traded among the US, Canada, and Mexico.

Trump blames NAFTA for wiping out US manufacturing jobs because it allowed companies to move factories to Mexico where labour is cheaper.

However I doubt it will bring any jobs back or really help out those looking for work...Like reagon said during
his re-election campaign to michigan autoworkers.."those auto jobs that have gone overseas are there to
stay...that train is too far down the track."

[Owens]

7. What a hypocrite

"Trump blames NAFTA for wiping out US manufacturing jobs because it allowed companies to move factories to Mexico where labor is cheaper." Yet he and Ivanka have other countries make their crap. Does Trump have any factories in this country?

[Maxheader]

11. I think tRump is mostly a real estate mogul...

[jgmiller]

4. It's like everything that he says

People need to stop parsing what he says and just report that once again he just made something up, lied, whatever. The negotiations aren't probably even 25% of the way there and he doesn't care he might not even know at what point they are because again he doesn't care. This is how his whole life has been, the only thing he ever cared about how close to completion something were his buildings or golf courses; everything else is just a fiction at that moment in time for him.

I really don't understand why the media, politicians, anyone keeps trying to figure out what he's trying to say. For someone who just goes minute by minute making things up to fill the empty space around him there is no way to calculate the meaning because there isn't any. That itself is the meaning; he just wants to say something to make himself look like he's doing something and move on to the next topic.

[Scarsdale]

5. It would be a great idea

if he would do nothing but golf until after the mid-terms. No tweeting, no interviews on Faux, no SC nomination. Nothing but golf. I am so sick of seeing his ugly, orange peel face, it makes me puke.

[NCjack]

6. The NAFTA deal must be really bad for Red Congr. Districts. Otherwise, we would

already be showered with his self-aggrandizing twits.

[no_hypocrisy]

8. So what Trump is saying is hurry up with my Supreme Court justice nomination but let's not allow

NAFTA to influence the mid-term elections.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

9. That way, only AFTER the rubes have voted to support the candidates ****head backs

will they find out that their jobs have been terminated.

[DetlefK]

10. While he stalls, the rest of the world is cutting deals that make the US step by step irrelevant.

All around the world, various former business-partners of the US are forging new trade-alliances with new partners, turned off by Trump's chaotic style and his tariffs.

Once these countries have found new, good deals with new, reliable partners, it will be very hard for the US to convince them to come back. US trade will suffer for years, if not decades, to come.

[maxrandb]

12. In other words; he doesn't have a fucking thing

and his sychophants haven't figured out how to accept the EXACT SAME, or more than likely, worse NAFTA deal, but convince his dumbass toothless base that it's better.

[LiberalLovinLug]

13. I don't think he will ever sign a new NAFTA deal

It will never be "good" enough. Anything Canada and/or Mexico thinks they can live with means to him that he can still squeeze out a bit more. And Canada and Mexico will have to have enough for them to sign, that is how negotiation is supposed to work.

For Trump, if he gets a deal signed he will claim victory, but its just as well for him that nothing gets signed. He thinks it will make him look tough. He'll say he couldn't sign a deal where Mexico and Canada got all the benefits and the US got none, or some such line. And his adoring deplorables will cheer him on even as their jobs are cut back, and prices go up because of an unnecessary tariff war.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

14. Like that's going to win the dotard any leverage