The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) appears to be careening off the tracks. Alternate trade objectives are driving a wedge between the U.S. and Canada. As the Toronto Star reports, just one week after President Donald Trump embraced Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau like a faithful friend, the administration is openly feuding with Canada over NAFTA.
On Tuesday, as U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland shared the stage, the two NAFTA reps traded heated criticism while the astonished press corps watched and listened.
Both senior diplomats spoke undiplomatically about how the NAFTA talks are progressing badly. Freeland slammed Vice President Mike Pence’s “win-win-win” NAFTA strategy, which, she said, would degrade not upgrade the trade deal. She excoriated the U.S. for its “winner-take-all mindset or an approach that seeks to undermine NAFTA rather than modernize it.”
For his part, Lighthizer identified both Canada and Mexico’s “resistance to change” that manifested itself in a desire for “one-sided benefits.” Freeland countered that barb with her observation that the U.S. wanted to “turn back the clock on 23 years of predictability, openness and collaboration under NAFTA.” Then she hammered the recent American demands for a greater presence auto manufacturing as protectionist.
Although the NAFTA negotiations have now been extended into 2018, all three partners could agree on one thing: the presence of “significant conceptual gaps” in the bargaining process.
Freeland didn’t dismiss the possibility of success but said she was ready “for the worst possible outcome.”