Trump on wall: Fund it or I’ll shut down government
majority of the American people, he will be heading toward a government shutdown which nobody will like and which won’t accomplish anything,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.
Republicans, too, privately vented their dismay at the president’s tactics and language, which promised to further chill an already dysfunctional relationship between him and Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. The contest between Flake and Ward appears to have become something of a proxy fight between the two men.
White House aides had urged the president not to mention Flake by name at the rally in Phoenix on Tuesday, which Trump used as an opportunity to savage the media as unpatriotic and “sick,” angrily defend his response to racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Va., and praise Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff whose aggressive immigration crackdowns led to a federal conviction for criminal contempt of court after he ignored a judge’s order to stop detaining people merely on suspicion of being unauthorized immigrants.
The president criticized Flake only obliquely in the speech — “Nobody knows who the hell he is,” Trump said — and waited until Wednesday morning to take aim at the senator on Twitter: “I love the Great State of Arizona. Not a fan of Jeff Flake, weak on crime & border!”
Just a week WASHINGTON — into talks to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement, President Donald Trump is already threatening to abandon the 23-yearold pact with Canada and Mexico.
At a high-profile campaign-style rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night, Trump predicted that the United States would “end up probably terminating” NAFTA “at some point,” though he said he hadn’t made a final decision.
“Personally,” Trump said, “I don’t think we can make a deal because we have been so badly taken advantage of.”
The president had made the same threat in April but then reversed himself after a pushback from American businesses, especially farm groups, which have benefited from expanded access to the Mexican market resulting from NAFTA.
The president’s renewed threat Tuesday reignited such concerns.
“Abruptly ending NAFTA could create a string of unintended consequences that need to be carefully considered,” said Ann Wilson, an executive at the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, which represents auto suppliers. “Mexico and Canada are trusted trade partners to the U.S., and, as a result, we are strong national security partners. We should not take that for granted.”
NAFTA erased most trade barriers separating the U.S., Canada and Mexico and fostered a rapid rise in commerce and closer diplomatic ties among the three countries. But the agreement has long fueled heated criticism in the United States because it led some American-based manufacturers to move operations south of the border to capitalize on lower-wage Mexican labor.
Trump has condemned NAFTA as “the worst trade deal in history” and promised to fix it — or drop out of it.
As negotiations on a NAFTA overhaul began last week in Washington, there was wide agreement on the need to modernize the pact to reflect changes over the past two decades, such as the rise of e-commerce.
Still, U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer warned that the United States wouldn’t settle for a “mere tweaking of a few provisions and an updating of a few chapters.” Saying NAFTA had cost America hundreds of thousands of jobs, Lighthizer insisted on the need to take steps to reduce America’s trade deficit and to ensure that more of the goods that qualify for NAFTA’s duty-free status be made in the United States. Canada and Mexico oppose that idea.
Most economists say NAFTA has had only a modest net effect on U.S. jobs because expanded commerce with Canada and Mexico has also created jobs and because trade represents a relatively small part of the U.S. economy.
After a five-day opening round, the three countries issued a statement that said they would resume talks in Mexico Sept. 1-5; in Canada in late September; and back in the United States in October. More rounds will likely follow.