Canada should reject Trump’s phoney NAFTA deadline

With May destined to be the make-it or break-it month for an early NAFTA deal, Canadian negotiators need to take a deep breath and hang tough.

They can’t let Donald Trump bully them into an agreement that weakens or impoverishes this country.

They can’t let the American president use his threat of tariffs to muddy the waters for a new trade pact between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

And they must remember that, at this point, no deal is better than a bad deal.

This might be a tall order. But if Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and her team need a clue to the president’s peculiar brand of brinkmanship, they should reread what he said in his book, The Art of the Deal, over 30 years ago.

“My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward,” Trump declared. “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.”

Forget compromise. Nuts to co-operation. Pushing – repeatedly, doggedly, single-mindedly – to get his own way is what he’s doing now with the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In March, he warned Canada and Mexico that unless they signed a new free-trade pact by May 1, the U.S. would slap a 25-per-cent tariff on their steel and a 10-per-cent tariff on their aluminum.

Push, push, push.

Then, on April 30 with just hours left before the tariffs would kick in, Trump miraculously extended the deadline to June 1. On Tuesday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer warned a new NAFTA deal must be negotiated in the next two weeks or any agreement would be postponed until after November’s congressional elections. Push, push, push.

But Lighthizer held a carrot as well as a stick. Canada and Mexico can win permanent exemptions from the tariffs — as long as they agree to a new NAFTA deal.

Here’s the additional catch. To get that deal, Canada and Mexico must accept tough new rules for the auto industry, including a requirement that 70 per cent of all steel, aluminum and glass in North-american made cars come from the NAFTA zone.

Meanwhile, the Americans are badgering Canada to make concessions on procurement, the dairy industry and NAFTA’S dispute resolution.

See the pattern? Push, push, push.

It’s always been clear in these negotiations that Canada and Mexico would have to give up some ground even as they might expect to win concessions from the Americans in other areas. That’s how these things work.

But Canada should not be stampeded into signing a flawed NAFTA deal in return for tariff exemptions.

Foreign Minister Freeland realizes this and to her credit is fighting to separate the issues of tariffs and NAFTA. It’s nonsensical for the president to argue the tariffs are necessary for America’s “national security” and its military when Canada is arguably his country’s closest military ally.

As for the American clock supposedly ticking this month, Freeland should let it tick. There’s no way the Americans will walk away from the negotiations – Trump’s scaremongering to the contrary.

And if Trump wants to risk punting the negotiations over until after November’s midterm elections, let him. If he loses control of one or both houses in Congress, he may lose the ability to push for the NAFTA deal he craves.