TRUMP VENTS ON CANADA
CLAIMS HE REJECTED ONE-ON-ONE WITH TRUDEAU AND DISLIKES OUR TOP NEGOTIATOR.
U.S. President Donald Trump says he rejected a request for a one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to discuss NAFTA this week because Canada’s tariffs are too high and the country’s negotiators have refused to budge.
In a wide-ranging press conference in New York on Wednesday, Trump also said, “We are very unhappy with the negotiations and the negotiating style of Canada. We don’t like their representative very much.” It was unclear who Trump was referring to but Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland has been the chief NAFTA negotiator for Canada.
“We are not getting along with their negotiators,” he said. “Canada has treated us very badly.”
Asked why he refused to meet with Trudeau, Trump said, “Because his tariffs are too high and he doesn’t seem to want to move and I told him forget about it.”
Shortly after Trump’s news conference, the Prime Minister’s Office disputed the president’s statement — insisting it did not request a meeting. Trudeau’s office declined further comment.
A source told the National Post Wednesday that Jared Kushner had been trying to orchestrate a last-minute summit between Trump, his father-in-law, and Trudeau in the hopes of breaking logjams in the trade talks.
“There are some parties working in Washington who think that if the two leaders get together, they may be able to resolve the thornier issues,” said the person, familiar with White House deliberations.
Trump quashed any hopes of that in his press conference Wednesday and it appears Canada is unlikely to join the new trade accord between the U.S. and Mexico by the U.S.imposed Oct. 1 deadline.
While talks are expected to continue after this weekend, the lack of a deal raises the spectre of days or weeks more trade uncertainty for the Canadian economy.
Indeed, the battle lines seemed to stiffen Wednesday, with Ottawa’s ambassador to Washington saying it is up to the Americans to bend on crucial issues, a day after the chief American negotiator complained of Canadian intransigence.
Asked to rate the chances of an agreement being reached this week, ambassador David MacNaughton suggested it was 50-50.
“Everybody knows what each other’s position is on all of the major issues and it’s really a question of whether or not the U.S. wants to have a deal,” he said at an event organized by the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global affairs and the Politico news outlet. “They know exactly what it is we’re prepared to do and what we need.”
MacNaughton said he had jokingly told Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative, that he would schedule a root canal operation after their next session, “just to make me feel better.”
A day earlier, Lighthizer himself also said many contentious issues remain, but suggested the problem lay with the Canadian side.
“The fact is that Canada is not making concessions in areas that we think are essential,” the U.S. official said.
All three countries have pushed to reach an agreement by Oct. 1 so it can be signed by Mexico’s outgoing president before he leaves office Dec. 1, while complying with a U.S. law that says the text of a new trade deal must be released 60 days before it’s signed.
Both the U.S. and Mexico have said they will press ahead with the bilateral accord they reached last month, with or without Canada.
But negotiators have indicated American-Canadian talks will continue even after the deadline this weekend has passed, though with no obvious breakthrough in sight.
“I don’t really see the elements of a deal,” said Mark Warner, a Toronto-based trade lawyer. “I don’t see the path to resolving those issues.”
MacNaughton suggested the two sides were deadlocked over U.S. demands to scrap NAFTA’s Chapter-19 mechanism for resolving anti-dumping and anti-subsidy disputes, the continued imposition of American “national-security” tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, and the threat of tariffs on auto exports from here.
“If you can’t resolve disputes in a fair and honest way, what’s the use of the agreement?” the ambassador asked about the Chapter 19 question. “If you can’t have some curb on the arbitrary use of tariffs under the guise of national security … then I don’t think it’s much of an agreement.”
He also mentioned another tough issue, American demands for greater access to Canada’s supply-managed dairy market.
Warner questioned whether Canada is wise to publicly stake out hardline positions. Chapter 19 has, in practice, been not that important, while Canada could do as Mexico did, trading Trump’s national-security tariffs for quotas on how much it could export to the States, he said.