WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Saturday there was no need to keep Canada in the North American Free Trade Agreement and warned Congress not to meddle with the trade negotiations or he would terminate the trilateral trade pact altogether. “There is no political necessity to keep Canada in the new NAFTA deal. If we don’t make a fair deal for the US after decades of abuse, Canada will be out,” Trump said on Twitter. “Congress should not interfere w/ these negotiations or I will simply terminate NAFTA entirely & we will be far better off,” he added. Trump on Friday notified Congress of his intent to sign a bilateral deal with Mexico, after contentious talks with Canada ended on Friday without a deal to revamp NAFTA. Trump had unveiled a deal with Mexico on Monday.
Lawmakers on Friday warned that a deal with Mexico could struggle to win approval from Congress unless Canada was also included. Support from Democrats would be needed to pass a purely bilateral deal, they said. Trump last week threatened to slap tariffs on Canadian-made cars if Canada did not join the talks to revamp NAFTA, which he has repeatedly criticised. Trump on Saturday, in his Twitter posts, reprised his attacks that NAFTA has resulted in a loss of US jobs and business. After four intensive days of talks in Washington between Canada and the United States, the biggest sticking points were familiar ones: US demands for more access to Canada’s closed dairy market and Canadian insistence that a trade dispute settlement system be maintained, not scrapped as Washington wants.
“For Canada, the focus is on getting a good deal, and once we have a good deal for Canada, we’ll be done,” the country’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, told a news conference.
All three countries have stressed the importance of NAFTA, which underpins $1.2 trillion in regional trade. A bilateral deal announced by the United States and Mexico on Monday had paved the way for Canada to rejoin the talks this week.
But by Friday the sentiment turned, partly on Trump’s explosive off-the-record remarks made to Bloomberg News that any trade deal with Canada would be “totally on our terms.” He later confirmed the comments, which the Toronto Star first reported.
“At least Canada knows where I stand,” Trump later said on Twitter.
Trump notified Congress that he intends to sign the trade pact by the end of November. Text of the deal will be published by around October 1.
Ottawa has stood firm against signing “just any deal.”
Some US lawmakers and business groups expressed concern about Canada’s not yet being not yet part of the agreement.
“Anything other than a trilateral agreement won’t win Congressional approval and would lose business support,” the chief executive of the US Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Donohue, said in a statement.
The Canadian dollar weakened to C$ 1.3081 to the US dollar after news of the talks’ lack of a result first broke. Canadian stocks remained 0.5 per cent lower. Global equities were also down following the hawkish turn in Trump’s comments on trade.
Following a meeting with Freeland, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said he was confident the United States and Canada would reach an agreement.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has refused to budge despite repeated efforts by Freeland to offer some concessions on dairy to maintain the independent trade dispute resolution mechanism under Chapter 19 of NAFTA, The Globe and Mail reported on Friday.
However, a USTR spokeswoman said Canada had made no concessions on agriculture, which includes dairy, but said that negotiations continued.
Trump argues that Canada’s hefty dairy tariffs are hurting US farmers, an important political base for his Republican party. But dairy farmers have great political clout in Canada, too, and concessions could hurt the ruling Liberals ahead of a 2019 federal election. At a speech in North Carolina on Friday Trump took another swipe at Canada. “I love Canada, but they’ve taken advantage of our country for many years.” — Reuters
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