Trudeau ready to meet Trump (and Mexicans) to renegotiate USMCA

During President Trump's first term, the US of A entered into negotiations with Canada and Mexico to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which the President called a "terrible deal". While the Donald frequently expressed his love for Canada, he took aim at Prime Minister Blackie McBlackface, calling him "two faced", "weak", and a "far-left lunatic."

The result was the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which replaced NAFTA, effective in 2020. 

This past August, as the campaign for the 2024 election started to heat up, President Trump said, "I terminated NAFTA. That's a pretty big thing. A lot of people said it would be impossible to do. I got it done, and we have a great deal now. What we have to do is make it much better even, and we'll be able to do that very shortly."

Just three weeks prior to his landslide victory, President Trump vowed to renegotiate the USMCA.  "I am announcing today that upon taking office, I will formally notify Mexico and Canada of my intention to invoke the six-year renegotiation provisions of the USMCA that I put in," he told the Detroit Economic Club.

The USMCA agreement is up for review on its sixth anniversary [not "six-year anniversay"! Ed.], when the three countries will have to confirm in writing if they wish to extend the pact or re-evaluate it. "That was the hardest thing I had to get, they didn't want that," Mr Trump said of the unique review clause. "I said, 'Nope, I want to be able to renegotiate in six years, otherwise we're not making the deal.' And I got it, and it's coming due very soon. Oh, I'm going to have a lot of fun." 

President Trump said he wanted to better protect and promote the American auto industry, which has long been centred in Detroit. "I'll also seek strong new protections against transgender ["transshipment" shurely, Ed.] so that China and other countries cannot smuggle their products and auto parts into the United States tax-free through Mexico to the detriment of our workers and our supply chains. They smuggle this stuff in. They don't pay anything. We're going to have very strong language on that."

Car-makers and car-buyers, stay tuned!

VIDEO: Fact-checking the media's "Trump calls for 'bloodbath'" hysteria

"WTF?!?", said I to myself, said I, when I heard something like the stories (word chosen carefully) on the early AM news. 

I didn't listen to President Donald Trump's speech last night, but couldn't believe he would be so careless in his choice of words as to predict, let alone call for, anything like an insurrection or revolution or a "bloodbath".

For years now, as the divisions in the American society get more and more pronounced, pundits and SJWs and others with political and social engineering agendas have talked about cultural wars, political wars, and even "civil war", but almost no-one believes there could be an actual shooting war, let alone a "bloodbath". 

It turns out that, at the Buckeye Values PAC rally, the once-and-future POTUS was talking about the financial "bloodbath" that awaits the U.S. motor industry if he is not elected, so that China would be enabled to swamp the country with their tinker-toy EVs and other cheap products.

Here's what the once-and-future POTUS actually said:

 

For the hard-of-hearing [or hard-of-understanding. Ed.], here's a transcript:

"If you’re listening, President Xi — and you and I are friends — but he understands the way I deal. Those big monster car manufacturing plants that you’re building in Mexico right now … you’re going to not hire Americans and you’re going to sell the cars to us, no. We’re going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected. Now if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s gonna be the least of it … It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That will be the least of it...."

The usual critics -- Democrats, RINOs, and the lickspittle media -- jumped on the "bloodbath" word, only, toick to infer scary intentions, even after Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung made clear that Mr Trump had clearly been talking about the impact of offshoring on the country’s auto industry and his own plans to increase tariffs on foreign-made cars. 

What lesson do we learn from this, campers? Always listen carefully to what is being said, and give the words...all the words...their plain meaning. Just as judges should do with the Constitution of the US of A. Just read it. Don't "interpret" it! End of lesson.

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!

A letter to Prime Minister Harper

Agent 3 has sent Walt a copy of his (?) letter to the once and future Prime Minister of Canada. (Lifetime pct: .973) While Agent 3's math may be off by a trillion dollars or so, the idea underlying his suggestions bears thinking about.

Dear Mr. Harper,

Please find below my suggestion for fixing Canada's economy. Instead of giving billions of dollars to banks and auto manufacturers who will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan:

There are about 2 million people over 50 in the workforce. Pay them $1 million apiece as severance pay for early retirement, with the following conditions:

1) They MUST retire. 2 million job openings. Unemployment fixed.

2) They MUST buy a new Made-in-Canada car. 2 million cars ordered. Auto industry fixed.

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage. Housing crisis fixed.

4) They MUST send their kids to school/college/university. Crime rate fixed.

5) They MUST buy $50 worth of alcohol/tobacco/gasoline per week. There's your money back in duty, taxes, etc.

It can't get any easier than that!

Yours truly,
Ordinary Joe Canadian