Concerned about the loss of\u00a0manufacturing jobs to Mexico, President Donald Trump campaigned last year on a pledge\u00a0to either renegotiate\u00a0NAFTA<\/span>\u00a0to get a better deal for American workers, or use his executive powers to give notice that the U.S. would terminate the agreement.<\/p>\n Last November, Ambrose\u00a0accused the Liberal government of jumping the gun when Canada’s ambassador swiftly articulated a willingness on Canada’s part<\/a> to reopen the deal.<\/p>\n Trump’s concerns with NAFTA\u00a0are “about Mexico, not Canada,”<\/a>\u00a0she said then.<\/p>\n Ambrose’s attacks implied\u00a0Canada looked weak for capitulating to Trump’s demand to rework the deal.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Wow. That is some tough negotiating,” she said in a speech to her caucus last fall.\u00a0“Clearly [Prime Minister Justin Trudeau]\u00a0never read [Trump’s book]\u00a0The Art of the Deal<\/em>.”<\/p>\n President Donald Trump, seen here during a press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May Friday, wants to move very quickly to start renegotiations. But this week’s confrontations with the Mexican government over Trump’s intentions to build a wall along the border suggest talks are unlikely to proceed smoothly. (Evan Vucci\/Associated Press)<\/p>\n But in the weeks since, it appears the Conservative position has evolved to now accepting the need for at least amendments to the deal.<\/p>\n Updates to the deal may be useful.\u00a0Labour mobility provisions, for example, don’t include many now-common information technology professions<\/a> on the\u00a0list of workers eligible for temporary entry to\u00a0the U.S.<\/p>\n Conservatism in Canada, particularly prior to Stephen Harper’s tenure as leader, has sometimes featured a strain of trade skepticism in its ranks.<\/p>\n Anti-free trade campaigner David Orchard, for example, once seriously challenged for the leadership of one of the Conservative Party’s predecessors, the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.<\/p>\n David Orchard (right), who campaigned against Canada’s free trade deals with the U.S. and Mexico, twice ran for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party, a predecessor of the party Ambrose now leads. (Frank Gunn\/Canadian Press)<\/p>\n Ambrose was asked Friday about whether there are voters among\u00a0her party’s base today who might see\u00a0layoffs like the 625\u00a0workers announced Friday<\/a>\u00a0at the General Motors\u00a0CAMI assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ont. as evidence trade agreements threaten jobs.<\/p>\n Some of the electoral gains the party made under Harper’s leadership came when so-called blue-collar voters in ridings with significant unionized manufacturing businesses\u00a0switched from voting NDP to voting Conservative.<\/p>\n Unifor’s\u00a0national president, Jerry Dias, who represents the CAMI workers, said Friday that the General Motors move shows NAFTA is a terrible deal\u00a0\u2014 only the latest labour\u00a0leader sharing\u00a0Trump’s views<\/a>.<\/p>\n Could the anti-trade rhetoric that propelled Republicans to victory in the U.S. last year take hold in Canada’s Conservative-voting ranks?<\/p>\n “As someone who believes in free trade, I worry about the world becoming less interested in free trade,” Ambrose said. “Globalization writ large has made the world wealthier, healthier and safer.”<\/p>\n Plus, protectionism is bad for Canadian business, she suggested.<\/p>\n “We have a small economy.\u00a0And we need open borders so that we have access to more markets,” she said.<\/p>\n Ambrose said the CAMI layoffs are a symptom of something else: poor government.<\/p>\n “We’re not losing jobs because of NAFTA. We’re losing jobs because we’re uncompetitive,” she said. “That goes back to government policy.”<\/p>\n “If our taxes are higher, our labour costs are higher, our energy costs are higher…\u00a0then there is no level playing field anymore and we’ll lose.”\u00a0<\/p>\n While concerned about the job losses, Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains said Friday that the government remains “optimistic about the strength and future of Canada’s automotive industry.”<\/p>\n After previously suggesting the Liberal government shouldn’t have been so quick to agree to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose said Friday that the deal could be improved through talks. “NAFTA was written when the internet wasn’t even around,” she said at the conclusion of her party’s caucus meeting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64937,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-64936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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<\/p>\nTrade skeptics among Conservative base?<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n‘We’re uncompetitive’<\/h2>\n
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