Trump U-turn on threat to leave
President pledges Nafta renegotiation hours after threatening to walk away Man who wrote book on sealing deals has
PRESIDENT Trump today abandoned plans to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Just hours earlier, the White House had said he was considering issuing an executive order for the US to split from the other two nations in the deal, Mexico and Canada, and go it alone.
The U-turn came despite Mr Trump’s repeated campaign attacks on the trade pact, which he described as a “disaster” and a bad deal for the middle classes. As recently as last week he declared that Nafta — which was negotiated by Bill Clinton — was harmful to American workers and a “catastrophic trade deal for the United States”. Yesterday an administration official said a full withdrawal was on the table.
However, Mr Trump has now told the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau that America will “bring Nafta up to date through renegotiation”.
The announcement came before Mr Trump’s 100th day in office on Saturday. The White House said: “President Trump agreed not to terminate Nafta at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the Nafta deal to the benefit of all three countries.”
Mr Trump said he believes “the end result will make all three countries stronger and better”.
Washington analysts saw the apparent change of course as a ploy intended to get a better deal from Mexico and Canada by taking them to the brink. A a withdrawal would have had serious repercussions for trade between the three nations. Mr Trump has already taken the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal put together under the Obama administration.
Although his decision to stay in Nafta does not have the populist appeal of his campaign rants against the deal, he can nevertheless say that he has ful- filled a 100-day pledge to renegotiate the pact with Mexico and Canada.
Fears of a pull-out had led to Republican protests, with senator Ben Sasse warning earlier yesterday that “scrapping Nafta would be a disastrously bad idea”. He added: “It would hurt American families at the checkout, and it would cripple American producers in the field and the office.
“There are places where our agreements could be modernised but here’s the bottom line: trade lowers prices for American consumers and it expands markets for American goods. Risking trade wars is reckless, not wise.”
The move came as the president sought to send a strong signal to North Korea by toughening sanctions and
‘The president’s approach aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear programme’ White House statement
stepping up diplomatic moves aimed at pressuring the rogue regime to end its nuclear and missile programmes.
The White House said: “The president’s approach aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile and proliferation programmes by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners.”
The US has a blanket ban on trade with North Korea and a blacklist of anyone dealing with it. It was not immediately clear what further sanctions Washington could impose. The ultimatum seemed to carry little weight in Pyongyang. In a rare interview with CNN, a North Korean government official insisted his country’s nuclear tests wou l d “never stop” as long as the US continued “acts of aggression”. ACCORDING to President Trump, the 100-day mark is a “ridiculous standard” that simply does not matter.
But like much of the Trump presidency, the opposite is actually true. The milestone supposedly matters so little that the White House has an entire section of its website devoted to how he is “keeping his promises”.
It matters so little that Mr Trump is spending the entire week rolling out big initiatives and has ordered his advisers to give dozens of briefings to the media. The idea that a president