PM CALLS TRUMP A RULE BREAKER
Trudeau argues Canada needs dispute settlement chapter that president wants gone
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau branded Donald Trump a rule breaker in arguing Wednesday for Canada’s fight to preserve the dispute settlement chapter that the U.S. president wants shredded from the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Trudeau offered some of his sharpest criticism of the unpredictable American president during a telephone interview with an Edmonton radio station, just as Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland resumed NAFTA talks in Washington with U.S. trade czar Robert Lighthizer.
While Freeland said she agreed with Trudeau’s assessment of Trump, she went out of her way to praise Lighthizer’s “good faith” and “good will,” clearly assuming the role of the good cop as the NAFTA talks enter a critical phase just a block from Trump’s White House.
Trudeau, meanwhile, slid into the so-called bad cop role, telling Edmonton radio station CHED that Canada won’t give an inch to Trump’s desire to scrap NAFTA’s Chapter 19 dispute resolution panels. The chapter allows companies to have their differences settled by independent arbiters — something
Trump views as an infringement of U.S. sovereignty.
“We need to keep the Chapter 19 dispute resolution because that ensures that the rules are actually followed. And we know we have a president who doesn’t always follow the rules as they’re laid out,” Trudeau said.
As she emerged in the sweltering Washington humidity after two hours of talks with Lighthizer, Freeland said she wanted to stick to her agreement with Lighthizer to not negotiate in public. But she added:
“I agree with the prime minister in public all of the time, and in private 99.99 per cent of the time . . . he made some important comments.”
At Trump’s behest, the three NAFTA countries have been negotiating for more than a year to revamp the trilateral agreement that has been integral to the continent’s economy for more than two decades. The U.S. and Mexico reached a side deal last month, leaving Canada to negotiate separately with the U.S.
In the radio interview in
Edmonton, Trudeau reiterated his full-throated defence of Canada’s cultural exemption in NAFTA.
Sources familiar with the Canadian bargaining position say the cultural exemption Canada has insisted on preserving since NAFTA talks reopened remains an 11th-hour sticking point.
“The idea of preserving it remains an unresolved issue between the two,” said one source, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivities surrounding the issue.