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Whatever Trump actually does on tariffs, his what-you-call-a-binding-agreement-I consider-a-suggestion approach is already creating huge, consequential uncertainty 1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Worth noting that NAFTA didn't do that much to reduce tariffs, which were already low – US tariffs on Mexico were low before the agreement 2/ usitc.gov/publications/3… 
And Mexico did its big liberalization in the 1980s, not as part of NAFTA or even the runup to the deal 3/
What mattered was that NAFTA gave manufacturers certainty (or so they though): a guaranteed regime that let them plan border-spanning value chains 4/
So it's kind of ironic that the official report predicting gains from moving from NAFTA to the Village People agreement, I mean USMCA, depends ENTIRELY on the claim that it would reduce "policy uncertainty" 5/
Can we now say that USITC's analysis was politicized and not credible? Because it sure looks that way given what we know now? 6/
