it's consistent with what he said earlier, too: that he'd love to sit down with the president and talk about renegotiating nafta. sure. pull up a seat, don. because the liberal party always loved nafta, right? it wasn't something that mulroney fucked up hard and that chretien had no realistic means of escape from and had to eat whether he liked it or not. what trudeau was doing was calling his bluff.
sure. let's renegotiate nafta! there's this list of stuff, here, that we've been waiting for 25 years to squirm out of...
trudeau is not going to get along with trump. and, it may be the best thing he can hope for, too: because nothing unites canadians behind the liberal party like an asshole republican in the white house.
http://globalnews.ca/news/3072173/justin-trudeau-canada-will-only-respond-to-concrete-proposals-from-donald-trump/
to be clear: i'd love to renegotiate nafta, and i couldn't ask for a more clueless idiot than trump to renegotiate it with. how's that for playing a hand?
free trade with the united states - reciprocity - has always been in the canadian interest. the liberals have always supported it. but, the agreement was negotiated and signed by the worst prime minister that the country has ever had. he sold the country off. he threw away our sovereignty. he caved on everything imaginable. so, of course the liberals opposed it - and they were right to oppose it.
but, then they win the election in 1993 and they can't escape it. if they sign it, we're fucked. but clinton knows he can't get a renegotiation through congress, and he's not interested in opening it up. so, if they don't sign it, we're even more fucked because we're poking the eyes of our biggest export market. it's a brutal cost-benefit analysis. but, they were right to sign it, even after they were right to oppose it.
so, they signed a deal they opposed because they didn't have a choice. and, they've been waiting for the opportunity to renegotiate ever since.
so, yeah - let's sit down and talk. you've twisted our arm.
if the liberals had the opportunity in 1993, they would have scrapped nafta and started from scratch. that wasn't an option, then. we got sucked into an agreement that was primarily between the us and mexico. the fta was bad, but it was better because it was actually about us. so, i would strongly support this, still, today. remember: if we trash nafta, the fta still exists. that would be a good start. but don't count on it....
"NAFTA was built upon CUSFTA. The text of CUSFTA was used during negotiations with Mexico and there were some new provisions. For example, trading automobiles had to be adjusted because Mexico’s investment rules were also somehow adjusted and one of the big changes connected with NAFTA and Canada-US free trade agreement is the Investment Chapter. NAFTA has also chapter 11 which deals with dispute settlement connected with the protection of investment. The CUSFTA did not have this chapter. There was no particular investment dispute settlement, there was only some general dispute settlement between government, but in the case of NAFTA, US Government was very concern of protection of US Investments. Mexican court system was adequate for the US and Canadian investments so the part be of Chapter 11 was added and NAFTA became the first RTA which contains an investment arbitration."
so, if trump were to come in and trash nafta, reverting back to the fta, i'd be about 95% of the way there, in terms of supporting a free trade agreement with the united states, specifically.
chances of that happening? i'd say close to zero.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/introduction-north-american-free-trade-agreement-isds-khachatryan