Trump’s trade deal with Mexico leaving Canada out in the cold

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s drive to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement has taken an unexpected turn — one that complicates his effort to replace that deal with one more favorable to American workers.

Canada, America’s longtime ally and No. 2 trading partner, was left out of a proposed deal Trump just reached with Mexico and is scrambling to keep its place in the regional freetrade bloc — and fend off the threat of U.S. taxes on its vehicles.

By contrast, Mexico, long the target of Trump’s ire, has cut a preliminary deal with the United States to replace NAFTA with a pact that’s meant, among other things, to shift more manufacturing into the United States.

In announcing the deal Monday, Trump said he wanted to call it the “United States-Mexico Trade Agreement,” pointedly omitting Canada.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland hurried to Washington yesterday to try to repair the damage. But she doesn’t have much time.

U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer intends to formally notify Congress of the deal on Friday. This would begin a 90-day countdown that would allow Mexico’s outgoing president, Enrique Pena Nieto, to sign the new pact before leaving office Dec. 1. Otherwise, President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador might want to reopen the negotiations and further complicate the prospects for a new agreement.