While Canuck minister plays SJW, USA and Mexico near NAFTA deal

Canadian investors and businesspeople are chewing their nails, waiting and hoping for their federal government (Just In Trudeau, Prop.) to get serious about reaching a deal with the Paranoid States of America (and maybe Mexico) to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The economies of the Land of the Somewhat Free and the Great No-longer-white North are so intertwined that a reversion to the status quo ante would be disastrous for Canada, less so for the USA. Canucks are worried about the possible failure of negotiations, Americans... not so much.

Chrystia Freeland, Canada's silver-spoon liberal Minister of Global Affairs [sic], announced as negotiations got under way that her Liberal government's priorities would be: aboriginal rights, gender equity and climate change. The American negotiators replied, "Huh? Don't you want to talk business?" Months of dithering have passed with Canada and the USA failing to even get on the same page, while the Mexicans look on in puzzlement.

So tired are the Americans of having to deal with the fragrant Ms Freeland and her SJW agenda that they resorted to holding "lower level" meetings without her. See "Canuck foreign minister Freeland skips 5th round of NAFTA talks", WWW 16/11/17. Mr Socks responded by putting former Conservative Prime Minister Lyin' Brian Mulroney and cabinet minister Rona Ambrose on the negotiating team, but everyone knew that was just for show since Ms Freeland won't talk to anybody who doesn't agree with the liberal orthodoxy. "These people are impossible to deal with! I'm going home!" was how she responded to questions from the Belgian government during negotiations for a Canada-European Union trade deal.

The Americans' next ploy was to let it be known, through "back channels", that they would be happy to sit down with someone more business-minded. That led to a clandestine visit to the White House by Stephen "Call Me Steve" Harper, the Conservative who Junior defeated in October of 2015. See "Mysterious meeting between WH bigshots and former Canadian PM", WWW 28/6/18. Unfortunately, word of the visit leaked out, and the Liberals can't afford politically to follow up on any progress which might have been made.

The state of play at the moment is that, absent the distraction of Ms Freeland and her SJW demands, the USA and Mexico are having productive talks, getting down to where the rubber meets the road. Reports this week suggest they're getting close to a deal, including an agreement on the contentious auto sector. That a deal is imminent was confirmed by none other than POTUS himself, who sent out this tweet on Friday.

Because of tariffs and trade barriers, President Trump said, "Canada must wait." Bad news for the Canucks, but not unexpected.  Two days earlier, Breitbart News reported that former New York Stock Exchange President Tom Farley said expected Trump to reach a trade deal with Mexico before the midterm elections. "Likely not Canada. China will be the bogeyman," he said. "You’ll see China continue to struggle. And then the idea will be can we get a big trade deal prior to [Donald Trump's] next election" in 2020.

Before the NAFTA negotiations got underway, many predicted that President Trump would have the hardest time working with Mexico because of his promise to erect a wall along the border. Instead, American negotiators have discovered they have a lot of common ground with the Mexicans, and talks have gone well. The stumbling block in renegotiating a tripartite NAFTA is... wait for it... Canada!