Canada - Mexico - USA: Trump hails ‘historic’ trade deal with Canada and Mexico - by David Lynch

President Trump on Monday hailed the major revisions he was able to extract from Canada and Mexico to the 25-year-old North American trade agreement, as business executives, labor leaders, and lawmakers began poring over details.

“Throughout the campaign I promised to renegotiate NAFTA and today we have kept that promise,” Trump said at a Rose Garden news conference.

Calling the deal “truly historic,” Trump pledged: “It will transform North America back into a manufacturing powerhouse.”

The White House, as well as leaders from Canada and Mexico, announced they had inked the deal late Sunday after Canada’s 11th hour agreement. But congressional approval is uncertain, particularly if Democrats retake control of the House in the November midterm elections.

Note EU-Digest: the BS continues, as not much is changed re: old NAFTA deal.

Read more: Trump hails ‘historic’ trade deal with Canada and Mexico

Canada: Blame Canada: Trump paints us as suave international swindlers - Adrian Morrow

To hear Donald Trump tell it, Canada is a suave international swindler, repeatedly conning American leaders and waltzing away with his country's money.

The U.S.'s neighbour to the north is "very smooth," has "outsmarted our politicians for many years," and has been "very rough" as it has "taken advantage" of the hapless superpower.

For months, the U.S. President has painted this portrait of Canada as Machiavellian manipulator in his public comments. Earlier this week, he took it to a new level.

During a meeting with state governors to discuss school safety, Mr. Trump went on a lengthy digression about trade policy, rounding on his country's partners in the North American free-trade agreement, which is being renegotiated this week in Mexico City. Mr. Trump accused the slick Canadians of trying to trick him into believing the deal is working well.

"We cannot continue to lose that kind of money with one country. We lose a lot with Canada. People don't know it," he said. "Canada's very smooth: They have you believe that it's wonderful, and it is – wonderful for them. Not wonderful for us."

This doesn't exactly jibe with the Great White North's usual image – the guileless neighbourhood nice guy, maybe a little quietly insecure next to his hyper-confident next-door neighbour.

"'Canada is very smooth.' – Donald Trump," tweeted CNN pundit Chris Cillizza. "No one has ever said this about Canada before. Not ever. Never."

In the Reputation Institute's 2017 list of the best-regarded countries, an annual survey of 39,000 people in the world's 55 largest economies, Canada scored high on perceptions of public safety, ethics, effective government and favourable business climate. The country topped the list, just ahead of Switzerland and Sweden. (The U.S. was 38th, between Mexico and Venezuela.)

"It's both an unusual and exaggerated take," Stephen Hahn-Griffiths, Reputation Institute's executive partner and chief research officer, said of Mr. Trump's apparent image of Canada. "Outside of, maybe, some stand-up comics, there's no one with any substance who would characterize Canada in such a disparaging light."

Christopher Sands, director of the Center for Canadian Studies at Johns Hopkins University, said Mr. Trump's comments serve a political purpose: The Trudeau government has been lobbying free-trade-friendly governors and members of Congress, and encouraging them to pressure the White House to drop its protectionist demands in NAFTA talks. What Mr. Trump is trying to do, Mr. Sands argued, is drive a wedge between those American politicians and their new Canadian best friends.

Read more: Blame Canada: Trump paints us as suave international swindlers - The Globe and Mail

NAFTA: Trump’s zero-sum game has likely doomed NAFTA - by Lawrence Herman

Round 4 of the NAFTA negotiations ended in exceptional bitterness on Tuesday, with the United States presenting a series of deeply disturbing and unacceptable proposals. While the negotiating deadline was extended into early 2018, the talks are heading downhill and will likely hit the wall before then.

ti's interesting that commentators are now talking about the need for a Plan B (or C or D) for Canada, when it should have been clear that these talks were on a perilous slope from the outset.

While policy wonks were once full of naive optimism about modernizing the North American free-trade agreement, a cold shower of realism would have doused that rosy glow. The problem is these negotiations were never born of common objectives among like-minded governments. We're in these talks because of a diktat from one source – U.S. President Donald Trump.

After repeatedly condemning NAFTA as a "disaster" and the "worst trade agreement ever," Mr. Trump wasn't going to go gentle into that good night. He was obviously going to follow through with aggressively one-sided demands to Canada and Mexico – and that's what they are – or else.

U.S. presidents set the tone for their administrations in inaugural addresses to the country and the world at large. Remember Franklin Roosevelt and "We've nothing to fear but fear itself," or John F. Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you …"

In the case of Mr. Trump, it was a bombastic and inward-looking declaration that it would be "America first and only America first" during his term of office.

The U.S. approach to these negotiations is unprecedented, the opposite of countries sitting at the table to reach a balanced and mutually agreeable outcome. Mr. Trump will have none of that; to the contrary, it's all about a zero-sum, take-no-hostages game used by him in putting together real estate deals.

Faced with this reality, comments about the need for alternative plans for Canada are part of a deeper concern over an uncertain trade and political relationship with the United States.

Read more: Trump’s zero-sum game has likely doomed NAFTA - The Globe and Mail

NAFTA negotiators encounter early sticking points on visas, supply management and other issues

Negotiators have run into a series of early sticking points on nearly every major element considered key to achieving a new NAFTA agreement, The Canadian Press has learned.

A recurring pattern involves one country raising a prized priority only to have other parties systematically refuse to engage the conversation, said one source with knowledge of how the talks are unfolding in Mexico City.

"The tone is negative," said the source, who made sure to add that it's still early, he remains hopeful a deal can be reached this year, and that obstinacy is to be expected in initial bargaining.

He cited two examples.

One is the Canadians asking for greater access to professional visas. It's a priority not just for the Canadians, but also for businesses that struggle to send staff across the border. NAFTA's visa list is outdated and doesn't include modern digital jobs. The Americans have pushed off that conversation, which risks bumping into that country's sensitive immigration politics.

Canada has returned the favour. The second example cited by the source involves Canada's supply-management system. The U.S. has started to raise it as an issue. While the U.S. has not yet tabled a formal request, with numbers, it has declared its interest in loosening Canada's import controls on dairy and poultry.

Read more: NAFTA negotiators encounter early sticking points on visas, supply management and other issues - Business - CBC News

US-Canadian Relations: Justin Trudeau (David) and Donald Trump (Goliath) to meet Monday in Washington

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he will discuss Canadian values and jobs with U.S. President Donald Trump when the pair meets in person for the first time on Monday in Washington.

During a visit to Iqaluit Thursday, Trudeau was asked whether he would raise the controversial U.S. travel ban with Trump, which affects people from seven majority-Muslim countries, as well as all refugees.

"As everyone in Canada knows, I have two important responsibilities that stand out in the way we engage our neighbours to the south. The first is, of course, to highlight Canadian values and principles and the things that keep our country strong," he said.

Note EU-Digest: This will hopefully be a replay of the Biblical David and Goliath  story.

For complete report click here:  full report: Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump to meet Monday in Washington - Politics - CBC News

EU-US Trade Negotiations: TTIP Rhetoric and Reality: Europe's Regulations at Risk - by Frank Ackerman

TTIP:downward harmonization 
outweighing optimistic estimates

During the final week of April 2016, New York City was playing host to U.S. and European trade negotiators for the 13th round of talks on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Protocols agreement (TTIP).

That it is still even under discussion reflects not only the vast political influence of multinational corporations, but also a certain automatic orthodoxy among many economists. The latter assert that trade liberalization can create huge worldwide economic benefits.

If those benefits sound important, I hope you enjoyed them – because they have already happened. In the “bad” old days – think 1990 or earlier – there were real barriers to international trade. Tariffs, import quotas and many varieties of protectionist legislation did appear to limit the flow of goods between nations.

But then, NAFTA and CAFTA (the Central American Free Trade Agreement equivalent) opened up Western Hemisphere trade. Next, China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), and WTO rules lowered worldwide trade barriers.

Also, a longstanding textile quota agreement was allowed to expire as well.

Meanwhile, the European Union continued to expand its single market across more and more of Europe. Bilateral and regional trade agreements, too numerous to mention, continued to pop up on every continent.

Analyses sow there are enormous benefits from multiple areas of European regulation. In chemicals policy, the EU requires manufacturers and importers of chemicals to provide well-defined evidence on the safety of their products.

In the U.S., unfamiliar chemicals are treated as innocent until proven guilty, with almost no requirements for safety testing.

In climate change and renewable energy, Europe is far ahead of the United States. Thanks to feed-in tariffs and other policies that promote renewables, more than 25% of EU electricity now comes from renewable energy.

This has climate benefits, because it avoids CO2 emissions from conventional generation (usually coal-fired, in Europe).

It has health benefits, because it avoids the other pollutants caused by coal combustion.

And there are more than 1.2 million jobs in renewable energy industries throughout the EU.

The benefits of just these two areas of European regulation, chemicals policy and renewable energy, are almost as valuable as the entire economic benefit of TTIP to Europe (as estimated by TTIP advocates).

So suppose that Europe accepted TTIP and gained as much income as the trade optimists predict. If this came at the price of downward harmonization to U.S. standards,

Europe would lose about as much in the benefits of chemical safety and renewable energy as it gained in higher incomes. 

Since many other valuable areas of regulation would also be at risk, the overall losses from downward harmonization would greatly outweigh the optimistic estimates of the gains from slightly expanded trade.

The rhetoric of trade liberalization lives on. Only the reality has changed. As Janis Joplin might have put it, is free trade just another word for nothing left to lose?

We need another word for orderly, democratically governed trade between sovereign nations that are free to protect their citizens from social and environmental harm.

TTIP and similar proposed treaties have nothing in common with the international agreements we need to promote the common good.

Read more: TTIP Rhetoric and Reality: Europe's Regulations at Risk - The Globalist

International Trade: Boston Mayor De Blasio Rips Trans Pacific Partnership, Calls NAFTA a ‘Disaster’

Free Trade : Not Always Benefiting Everyone

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York today joined a slew of city politicians to decry President Barack Obama’s proposed Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal—comparing it to North American Free Trade Agreement, which he deemed a “disaster.”

“There’s such passion on this issue because we’ve already been to this movie,” Mr. de Blasio said at an anti-TPP rally in front of City Hall this morning. “We saw it with NAFTA. We saw what a disaster NAFTA was, and we’re not going to repeat that mistake in our time.”

Mr. de Blasio’s opposition to the TPP is not surprising: almost all of the city’s Congressional delegation is opposed to the deal, which is hated by unions. The pact would ease trade barriers and a host of regulations between the United States, Australia and several Asian and Latin American nations.

But the mayor’s comments come at a time when free trade has become a major issue in the presidential race, and not one that has been particularly good for Mr. de Blasio’s chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton. As President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, Ms. Clinton was instrumental in creating the free trade accord, though she has since disavowed it.

Her opponent for the Democratic nomination, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has emphasized his long-time opposition to free trade deals like the TPP, and to NAFTA—which was passed by President Bill Clinton. And while Mr. de Blasio and Republican front-runner Donald Trump have little in common, they’ve now shared language on NAFTA: Mr. Trump, too, has called that free trade deal a “disaster.”

Mr. de Blasio framed his opposition to the president’s trade deal in familiar terms—as part of his crusade against income inequality.

“It’s a fight we have to win because this goes to the heart of the matter—if we’re going to fight income inequality in this country, we have to fight TPP because it will take us backwards, it will take us in the wrong direction,” Mr. de Blasio said. “And there is such a powerful coalition that has come forward to make sure that our trade deals actually don’t hurt our own people. That’s what this comes down to.”

He said the country could not “sacrifice the American middle class to the all mighty dollar.”

“And NAFTA was that. NAFTA took away almost a million jobs in this country—tens of thousands of them here in New York State. We saw places all over this country—towns and cities devastated. We saw people who had solid middle class lives have the rug pulled out from under them,” Mr. de Blasio said. “People who had done everything right, who had played by the rules, who had worked hard, suddenly were left with nothing—that’s what NAFTA did, and we have every reason to believe that TPP will do the same. And that’s why we have to stand up and fight against it.”

The president, with the help of the GOP House majority, obtained “fast track authority” last summer— meaning he has the power to negotiate the act himself, and Congress will get only an up and down vote on the deal.

Read more: De Blasio Rips Trans Pacific Partnership, Calls NAFTA a ‘Disaster’ | | Observer