Trudeau heads to Mexico after blunt talk about alternatives to NAFTA <\/li>\n<\/ul>\nPrime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged yesterday\u00a0that the NAFTA renegotiation process has been difficult, following his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House.<\/p>\n
Trudeau was looking for reassurance from Trump over the importance of trade with Canada, but instead Trump mused about killing the three-country pact in favour of a bilateral trade agreement with Canada.<\/p>\n
Growing pessimism\u00a0<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Trump’s threats are being taken seriously\u00a0by members of the government’s NAFTA advisory panel, including former Conservative cabinet minister James Moore.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s a real threat and the odds are even, frankly, that it may happen,” Moore told CBC News Network’s\u00a0Power Politics<\/em>.<\/p>\n“If you look at President Trump, if you look at the sweep of what he’s done so far as president, he’s had very little success at proactively gaining things, but he’s had an actual success at taking things down,” Moore said.<\/p>\n
\n- Trump raises possibility of Canada-U.S. deal in meeting with Trudeau<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Trump’s threats to kill the deal are more than just discouraging, said\u00a0NDP trade critic\u00a0Tracey Ramsey.<\/p>\n
“It confirmed the\u00a0fact that the U.S. aren’t in negotiations in good faith,” Ramsey said during a phone interview with CBC News.<\/p>\n
She also suggested that Canada may be wasting its time and resources\u00a0trying to renegotiate a deal when the U.S. isn’t convinced it can be saved.<\/p>\n
“I’m concerned that this is all for some type of show. When we hear the president, sitting next to the prime minister, say that he isn’t confident that we can get a deal, it reinforces that,” she said.<\/p>\n
Canada will survive: Dias<\/h2>\n
Conservative foreign affairs critic Erin O’Toole said that\u00a0saving NAFTA\u00a0is in the U.S.’s national interest \u2014 with nine million jobs in that country depending on the trade pact\u00a0\u2014 but he remains concerned.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’m more worried now\u00a0than I was before the visit by the prime minister,” said O’Toole.<\/p>\n
“While it seems [Trudeau]\u00a0has a good personal relationship with the president, each week \u2026 NAFTA appears more at risk than ever,” O’Toole said.<\/p>\n
Despite the negative statements\u00a0and lack of progress, Dias said Canada will survive if the trade deal does not.<\/p>\n
“We have a heck of a lot to offer the global scale \u2026 we are a nation that’s rich in natural resources and raw materials,” Dias said. “Canada’s not shooting from a position of weakness here at all.”<\/p>\n
While there are big legal questions about what could happen if the U.S. terminates NAFTA, Canadian officials suggest trading rules would fall back to the original Canada-U.S. free trade agreement, negotiated in the late 1980s.<\/p>\n
If that happens, Canadian officials suggest that free trade agreement would also have to be modernized, meaning new trading talks would be needed.<\/p>\n
\n- Stephen Harper offers a gloomy take on the state of international trade, NAFTA<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Article source: http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/jerry-dias-otoole-moore-nafta-1.4352313?cmp=rss<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Blunt warnings about the fate of the North America Free Trade Agreement suggest\u00a0Canada needs to prepare for a world without the trade pact. “This thing is going into the toilet,” said Jerry Dias, the head of UNIFOR, Canada’s largest private sector union. Dias said it is clear the Americans are not looking to reach an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-95645","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\/95645","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=95645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95645\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}