Trump’s NAFTA Strategy: Bluff, Rebrand, Declare Victory
The president’s announcement that he was “terminating” a free-trade agreement means less than he said.
President Trump said Monday he’s “terminating” NAFTA, the free-trade deal with Canada and Mexico he’s called a “disaster” and blamed for job losses in the United States. It looked like a potentially massive development, as if Trump were signaling the end of a $1 trillion trade deal that’s defined trade in North America for more than two decades.
But what he went on to describe seemed like more of a rebrand than a revolution. He hailed new trade arrangements with Mexico, said he’d “see if Canada can be part of the deal,” and signaled that what he might really want to terminate was the name” itself.
