One-on-one with Ambassador David MacNaughton
Trump, trade and Saudi Arabia among topics of discussion
On Nov. 23, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, David MacNaughton sat down with St. Catharines Standard reporter Grant LaFleche to discuss the U.S. Canada-Mexico trade deal, Saudi Arabia and dealing with the Trump White House.
This is the transcript of that interview. It has been edited for length and clarity.
LaFleche: Now that the Democrats control the House, is there any possibility at this point to revisit some of the issues Canada may think is unfair or not to our advantage in (the new trade) deal? Or is it just done and there’s really nothing that can be done?
MacNaughton: If you revisit any of the issues the other side’s going to want to revisit their issues, and I think you just open up a can of worms. We’ll see what happens when it goes through Congress. Obviously, if what they’re talking about is making sure that the labour standards and other things are enforceable that’s one thing. If they want to try and reopen things, then we’re going to want to reopen things, too.
LaFleche: The Democrats don’t seem to have a whole lot of thought of negotiating with the Trump administration or finding a middle ground. Is there a possibility that they will reject this deal because it’s Trump’s deal and then we’re back to square one?
MacNaughton: Again, predicting what’s gonna happen in the U.S. Congress is a bit of a mug’s game quite apart from what the administration might do. I’m hopeful that it’ll go through because there are a number of elements in the deal that Democrats have been pushing for, too. And frankly (U.S. trade negotiator) Bob Lighthizer was quite clever in terms of some of the things that he worked with us on, with an eye to the possibility that there might be a Democratic House.
Nothing’s easy in Washington, but I’m cautiously optimistic. I really am.
LaFleche: What would be the worst case scenario at this point? I only ask the question because as I like to say to people, ‘Trump is president, reality is flux.’ It’s very difficult to predict.
MacNaughton: It is, it is. Look, I’m pretty confident that we have avoided the worst-case scenario. We are on the right track. I think any attempt to completely unwind all of this would face some pretty strong resistance. You’ve already seen on the steel aluminium tariffs the number of groups that have come forward saying, OK you’ve got your deal get rid of it.
LaFleche: On that score, and I put this question to (Foreign Affairs) Minister (Chrystia) Freeland when she was here a week ago. There’s a company here called the ASW trapped between Canadian and American tariffs. They take steel that they have here, it’s tariffed when it goes to the States. It gets processed there, it comes back to ASW for sale but it gets tariffed on the way in. What does that do for a company like ASW who’s trapped in the middle of a trade dispute and they really can’t do anything about. They’ve already had to slow production, reduce hours for their employees.
MacNaughton: We’ve got to look at duty remission and support. We have to be prepared, particularly if this goes on for any length of time, to work with companies like that to make sure that they have the support of the government. I don’t know whether they’ve been talking to the government yet about what they face and everything else.
LaFleche: According to (Welland MP Vance) Badawey, all the time.
MacNaughton: Probably, yeah. We had this conversation, I had it with Freeland yesterday about we’ll see, but if it looks as if the steel tariffs are going last for any period of time, we’ve got to make sure that companies that are caught in this cross fire are not permanently damaged. And that’s a real danger.
LaFleche: Does the Democratic House change that at all? Or is that purely in the purview of the administration?
MacNaughton: Well, the president found this little thing that he can do that he doesn’t have to talk to Congress about. What happened was that Sen. (Bob) Corker introduced some legislation in the Senate to curb the president’s ability to do that and he got push back from both Republicans and Democrats saying don’t tie the president’s hands during a negotiation, he’s got to have the leverage. Well, OK, but it’s over, right?
The aluminium thing is pretty straightforward, I think. Steel’s a little bit more complicated because you’ve got in the U.S., in the aluminium side, the only company that’s really pushing for the continuation of tariffs or quotas is Century. The rest like Alcoa, Rio Tento and the aluminium association are all supportive of removing it.