Story: Trump claims he's going to withdraw the U.S. from NAFTA to give Congress a take-it-or-leave-it choice between his new agreement and no agreement at all: thestar.com/news/world/201…
Caveat 1: Trump issues a lot of trade threats he doesn't execute. 2: He's been talked out of this specific move on previous occasions. 3: He couldn't "terminate" the agreement immediately; he'd trigger a six-month notice period. 4: It's unclear if he has the authority to do this.
But Canada and others have learned that it's unwise to dismiss Trump's trade threats as bluster; he *has* done a lot of the things he threatened to do. So we will see. This is more uncertainty, a day after Trudeau hailed the new agreement for lifting uncertainty.
Yes, but I think some Trump critics are wrong when they say it’s just NAFTA by another name. There are some significant changes, though it remains essentially NAFTA.
The Canadian government would not comment on the record about Trump's threat. An official said on condition of anonymity, “We are focussed on our domestic ratification process and not a process that is internal to the U.S.”
