Canada’s ambassador to the US David MacNaughton said in a CBC Radio interview that Trump has been “pretty consistent in his distaste for multilateral deals.” And, “from the outset President Trump has articulated a desire to do bilateral deals rather than multilateral deals so his comment wasn’t a tremendous surprise.” MacNaughton referred to Trump’s comment on Wednesday that he might make a trade deal with Mexico and do another one with Canada later.
But MacNaughton emphasized that “(NAFTA) is a tripartite agreement, we’d like to keep it that way … I am still fully confident we are going to end up with a trilateral deal and not two separate bilateral deals.”
He also said that “Canada doesn’t fit in that category” which posts legitimate security threats to the US. And, “I can’t imagine how you could use national security as a guise for imposing illegal tariffs on another country.”
