Trump: NAFTA talks will happen
President Donald Trump has vowed to go forward with NAFTA negotiations, but says the trade deal will be ‘terminated’ if talks fail.
WASHINGTON — Hours after his White House sounded a diplomatic tone about the United States’ future in a North American free trade pact, President Donald Trump issued a threat to Canada and Mexico.
While Trump thinks a new deal on the North American Free Trade Agreement is “very possible,” he tweeted Thursday that if a fair deal cannot be reached, “we will then terminate NAFTA.”
Senior administration officials worked Wednesday afternoon to tamp down what Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross dismissed as a “rumor” that the Trump administration was preparing to withdraw from NAFTA. Trump even got on the phone with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts, and the White House issued a latenight statement saying a consensus emerged to renegotiate the trade deal that Trump pilloried as a candidate.
The White House’s “readout” of each call described his talks with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto as “pleasant and productive.”
Trump agreed “not to terminate NAFTA at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly ... to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries,” the White House said.
“It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation,” according to a statement from the White House press office attributed to Trump. “It is an honor to deal with both President Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better.”
Trump, however, struck a much less diplomatic tone in a couple Thursday morning tweets.
The U.S. president started by noting the two leaders called him. He also claimed Trudeau and Pena Nieto requested that he avoid terminating the deal, and instead renegotiate it.
Trump tweeted that he “agreed,” but with a stipulation: “... if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA.” He declared a new deal as “very possible.”
The threat to withdraw is consistent with his campaign rhetoric. But his new willingness to renegotiate the pact does not match the tough talk of a candidate and president who has called NAFTA “the worst trade deal” into which the United States has ever entered. Another seeming inconsistency: Trump wants “bilateral” trade deals with individual countries, not ones that tie the U.S. to terms negotiated by multiple other countries.
On Feb. 13, Trump stood beside Trudeau in the White House’s East Room and said he intended to make only small changes to NAFTA that focus on U.S.-Canadian trade.
“We have a very outstanding trade relationship with Canada. We’ll be tweaking it,” he said of the NAFTA language. “We’ll be doing certain things that are going to benefit both of our countries.”