Inside the PMO squad tasked with saving NAFTA

PMO team’s mission: save trade deal

If Donald Trump deploys the big bomb during upcoming NAFTA negotiations, and threatens to blow up the continental trade agreement, a unit within the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be assigned to try disarming it.

The government has created an election-style nerve centre to handle White House-related challenges and officials who describe its operations say it has about eight regular staff: two former trade officials, two senior PMO officials, an ambassador, a writer, a cabinet minister, and it’s run by a young staffer with a reputation for staying cool while smothering political fires.

The most blistering inferno it’s preparing to confront is a scenario where the president threatens NAFTA. Everybody involved anticipates the threat level from Trump will rise with the heat of negotiations.

The first of three rounds of talks concluded yesterday and over the five past days negotiators for the three countries touched on substantive issues that revealed possible irritants ahead. Among the two-dozen-plus topics discussed so far were auto-parts rules, cutting edge pharmaceuticals, and labour.

A well-connected Washington lobbyist milling about last week’s talks said a Trump pullout threat is virtually assured: “Almost 100 per cent.” Trade lawyer Dan Ujczo said it’s a logical play for the president: “The threat of withdrawal is his key negotiating leverage.”

However one former U.S. trade official says the president has shown himself too eager to play his best card. He said the president has weakened his hand with an April tactical error, when he threatened to blow up NAFTA four months before negotiations started.

Robert Holleyman said Canada and Mexico got a valuable heads-up on what would happen next: the business community panicked, lawmakers were miffed, and Washington made clear it preferred saving NAFTA.

“It was, at a minimum, terrible timing,” said Holleyman, Barack Obama’s deputy United States Trade Representative.

“You do that at the 11th hour in the negotiation — not at the throat-clearing stage ... I suspect President Trump will be unable to play that card again. And if he does play it, it won’t be as strong as it would’ve been ... The Canadians and Mexicans will say, ‘You ... will face a huge backlash in your own Congress.’ ”

Congress definitely holds some power: It could refuse to cancel the law implementing NAFTA, which would likely end up in court fights.

It’s the job of that Ottawa unit to prevent that messy scenario.

The unit resembles a campaign war room — though its members hate that term. It gathers data on key constituencies — for instance, it collects American politicians’ opinions on issues and plugs them into a database.

It plans outreach efforts. It co-ordinates rapid response.

The idea for a dedicated unit came before Trump’s inauguration, from PMO officials Gerald Butts and Katie Telford, longtime Ontario provincial political officials who had used the approach before on top issues.

“This is the unit that spends 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, thinking about this — trying to anticipate every possibility,” said one official.

“The U.S. file is ... so superhot that you can take the slightest thing and turn it into a huge story that’s in every newspaper in North America. It’s really important to have the right person (handling it).” Enter Brian Clow. He was chief of staff to Chrystia Freeland when she was trade minister, but that’s not the principal reason he was brought in. What senior officials like was his penchant for staying cool, and working fast, in the Liberal election war room in 2015.

Clow refused an interview request.

But Warren Kinsella who trained him in working war rooms was impressed with Clow’s speed, cool, and ability to pump out video content while he worked on the 2007 and 2011 Ontario Liberal campaigns.

It was Kinsella who brought the modern campaign war room to Canada in 1993, modelled on Bill Clinton’s 1992 run, and who also authored Kicking Ass In Canadian Politics.

The Trump mission is infinitely harder, Kinsella said.

Kinsella joked that in elections all his job entailed was pulling pins from grenades and lobbying them. This team must prevent explosions, while working with thousands of officials, multiple government departments, two countries, industry groups, one global economic superpower, and an unpredictable president.

The unit got to conduct early test runs.

When Trump complained about Canadian dairy and lumber, and threatened a NAFTA pullout, it handled the response. The Canadian side kept the temperature down; it responded to heated rhetoric with statistics and telephone calls, and things quickly cooled down.

“They can’t declare war on Trump,” Kinsella said. ”In this situation you can’t throw hand grenades — we’re David, they’re Goliath.”