Has the Trudeau government's trade strategy failed?

[taxme]

23 hours ago, Hudson Jones said:

Trump can't just kill NAFTA. It's not that simple. El Presidente doesn't have that much power.

Mexico might be agreeing to some concessions, but Canada does have an upper hand. Canada has the U.S. states on its side, as there are numerous states who disagree with Trump on making any changes to the trade agreement. 

The usual people here, who blame stepping on dog shit on Trudeau, want to blame Trump's style of so-called negotiation, on Trudeau. Kind of like the hissy fit by Saudi Arabia showed, when Canada made a comment like they usually do about human rights. The usual suspects blamed Trudeau for S.A.'s hissy fit.

Trump believes he has the upper hand in all of these agreements. To a point, he does. However, now he is trying to bully his way through agreements, treaties and foreign policy without really looking at the big picture.

Have you asked yourself, what has Trump accomplished with his style so far?

Take North Korea for example: Is North Korea disarmed? Not really. Is it going that way? Not really. Does Trump even have a plan or an agreement in place? Not really.

What about the backlash Trump has received for his work permit and immigration stance? When you have an overwhelmingly number of tech workers from outside of U.S.

Trump is all huff and puff, and the idiots fall for it.

What do the experts say about the potential of NAFTA being canceled?

Here is Phil Levy, senior economist for trade on President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers:

It took Congress to pass NAFTA and it should take Congress to kill NAFTA. These agreements are not treaties, but rather international deals that only come into effect when Congress passes “implementing legislation.”

As things stand, there is some ambiguity, because the agreement itself allows for countries to withdraw, and the president would be the one to initiate such a withdrawal. But a president should not be able to revoke a law unilaterally. Further, the Constitution grants Congress, not the president, the power “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.”

Congress could pass new legislation clarifying this constitutional assignment of responsibilities. One might expect the White House to oppose any diminution of its power, but we’ve already seen Congress overcome such reluctance in the case of sanctions on Russia. To do it here would require some bipartisan understanding of the damage NAFTA withdrawal would do.

Here is Rob Scott, director of trade and manufacturing, Economic Policy Institute:

Trump can withdraw from parts of NAFTA without the consent of Congress, but it would have limited effects on trade or investment with Mexico or Canada.

The NAFTA Implementation Act, which cannot be revoked without the consent of Congress, says that if a country ceases to be a NAFTA partner, then tariff provisions of the agreement — rules that say that internationally traded goods are free from border taxes — will cease to be in effect. However, many other aspects of NAFTA would remain in effect, including provisions on government procurement, labor, and environmental conditions, services trade, and arbitration proceedings.

Also, if NAFTA were revoked, the president would be free to raise tariffs, but only to levels agreed to under the World Trade Organization — the so-called most-favored-nation rates. Under those rates, tariffs on imported goods are only 2.7 percent for the United States, 4.6 percent for Mexico, and 2.4 percent for Canada. While noticeable, these tariffs would not cause large initial trade disruptions.

As Trump has said many times already. America is not going to be taken for a sucker anymore by the rest of the world and that includes Canada. If you want to deal and trade with America then let's all play fair ball. Fair ball is not applying a 270% tariff fee on dairy products coming into Canada from America. Anyone can see that is just plain robbery and was only put in place anyway to look after the dairy producers of Quebec. That is not what I would call fair trade. Quebec is the one that is screwing up the talks here.

That tariff fee of 25% that Trump has said that will be applied to car parts going from Canada into America will do more harm to that industry than it will hurt some Quebec farmers who really do not give a shit about the rest of Canada anyway. Those dairy farmers in Quebec have been subsidized for far too long by the rest of Canada. Sad thing about it all is that some will win and some will lose. Things are not always fair in this world. Reality check time for most people may soon be here. It must not all be about the Quebec dairy industry you know. 

 

[Centerpiece]

I'll be really upset if Gender Equality is not spelled out in the agreement. If it's not there, Trudeau has lost my vote.

[Argus]

We're starting to get some insight into some of the failed strategies the Liberals engaged in during these trade talks, which will allow us to assess whether they screwed it up or just appear to have screwed it up. Apparently they tried to cut a deal with the US separately earlier on, which let the US play us and Mexico against each other.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-why-mexico-stabbed-canada-in-the-back-in-nafta-negotiations/