Thread by @EMPosts

SCOOP: Blackstone CEO Stephen @Schwarzman played a pivotal -- and, until now, little-known -- role in securing a 2018 deal between Trump and @JustinTrudeau to preserve free trade among US, Canada and Mexico, Jared Kushner writes in a new book.

THREAD

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bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

The buyout mogul’s intervention took place in late September 2018, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, Trump's son-in-law @jaredkushner writes in his new book “Breaking History: A White House Memoir,” set for release on Aug. 23.

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“Please let prime minister Trudeau know his negotiators are about to blow up a $600 billion trade relationship over BUTTER,” Kushner recalls telling the Blackstone co-founder and CEO, feeling that Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland was holding out.

@cafreeland

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Kushner writes that Enrique Pena Nieto @EPN, then Mexico’s president, also had a conversation with Trudeau around the same time, telling him that if Canada didn’t make a deal with the US, then Mexico would sign its own deal WITHOUT Canada.

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Trudeau agreed to terms that gave US dairy farmers expanded access to Canada’s market, and the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, known in US as the #USMCA, moved forward with all 3 nations, preserving the highly integrated regional economy and annual trade of more than $1 trillion.

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From his White House office, Kushner “operated quietly behind the scenes,” publisher Broadside Books says. “Now, Kushner finally tells his story,” covering his role in many national and global issues, including production of Covid-19 vaccines and Middle East peace talks.

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In another excerpt shared with @business, Kushner details how the #USMCA representative of Andres Manuel @lopezobrador_ , at the time Mexico’s president-elect, in August 2018 made one of the "worst" negotiating errors that Kushner and Lighthizer had ever seen.

@USTradeRep45

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At the negotiating table at the Office of the US Trade Representative in Washington, Kushner began to present a US offer on the so-called sunset clause relating to the agreement’s expiration.

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The US was fighting to get Mexico and, later, Canada to accept the sunset clause. Neither wanted it, saying it would create uncertainty for investors. The Trump administration thought that it would reduce the incentive for companies to move jobs abroad.

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Jesus Seade, who had been tapped by the Mexican leader known as AMLO, interrupted with his own offer that was far more advantageous for the US -- and harmful for Mexico -- than the offer Kushner was just about to make.

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Unbeknown to Seade, Kushner and Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, long a top adviser to Pena Nieto, had already worked together to agree on an expiration after 16 years, Kushner recalls.

@LVidegaray

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Seade interrupted Kushner’s introduction of that deal to suggest a 12-year expiration. The potentially shorter lifespan favored US objectives at the expense of Mexico.

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Kushner, Videgaray and Pena Nieto’s economy minister, Ildefonso Guajardo, then privately constructed a fake negotiation to have Guajardo ask for 18 years, so they could then arrive back at 16 years, Kushner writes.

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Kushner and Guajardo then played out the mock negotiation in then-US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer’s office in order to get back to the agreement originally reached between Kushner and Videgaray while allowing Seade to save face, according to Kushner.

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“After the Mexican delegation departed, Lighthizer and I looked at each other and laughed,” Kushner writes. “That was one of the worst negotiating moments either of us had ever seen. ‘Just remember,’ Lighthizer said, ‘no one gets smarter by talking.’”

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Kushner writes that the exchange demonstrated the first rule of negotiation: always let the other side go first.

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Guajardo, now a representative in Mexico’s lower house of congress, had earnestly sought an 18-year expiration in the talks, but needed to accept Kushner’s original 16-year idea after Seade’s suggestion for a shorter term, he said in an interview with me today

@USTradeRep45

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.@JesusSeade, in a separate interview with me, disputed Kushner’s characterization of the talks, saying the proposal he offered on behalf of AMLO involved periodic reviews of #USMCA linked to its expiration, with the clock resetting on its expiration date with each renewal.

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“The central point of the proposal I submitted, representing the government-elect team from the Mexican side, was to combine the extension of the deal with those reviews -- now with teeth, directly linked to the extension,” @JesusSeade told me.

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The proposal was intended to “respond to the US side’s complaint about Nafta that it had been an agreement negotiated forever,” @JesusSeade told me.

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.@JesusSeade, a veteran of academia, the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, went on to become a deputy foreign minister in the @lopezobrador_ government and has served since last September as Mexico’s ambassador to @China.

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AMLO last month said that he has asked @JesusSeade to help Mexico respond to a US complaint that Mexico’s nationalist energy policy violates the #USMCA.

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