The trade negotiation between US and Canada ended last week without any conclusion. Trump has already notified the Congress of his intent to sign a bilateral trade agreement with Mexico, which is called the United States- Mexico Trade Agreement. US-Canada trade negotiations will resume this Wednesday.
Over the weekend, he slammed Canada and NAFTA with his tweets. He said “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.” And, “Congress should not interfere w/these negotiations or I will simply terminate NAFTA entirely & we will be far better off.” Trump added “we were far better off before NAFTA — should never have been signed. Even the Vat Tax was not accounted for. We make new deal or go back to pre-NAFTA!”
While Canada was the topic of the tweets, the messages were clearly to the Congress. For now, it’s uncertain how Trump could get the US-Mexico trade deal through the Congress, without the involvement of Canada. Last Friday, chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Donohue also said in a statement that “anything other than a trilateral agreement won’t win Congressional approval and would lose business support.”
Democrat House minority leader Nancy Pelosi also said “actually fixing NAFTA requires reaching a trade agreement with both Mexico and Canada,” “without a final agreement with Canada, the administration’s work is woefully incomplete.”
