Trump threatens Canada with NAFTA pullout, warns Congress not to ‘interfere'
29 replies, posted
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/09/01/trumps-playing-tough-with-canadians-he-needs-them/
President Trump on Saturday threatened to withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement, asserting his right to broker a new trade pact that does not include Canada despite opposition from lawmakers and questions over his legal authority to do so.
Trump on Friday formally informed Congress of his intent to enter into a trade deal with Mexico, with the notice adding the administration hopes Canada would be added to the new pact later. U.S. and Canadian negotiators worked throughout the week on adding Canada to Friday's notice, but the negotiations failed to produce an agreement ahead of Trump's own Friday deadline.
Negotiations with Canada are set to continue Wednesday in the hopes of adding Canada to the deal. Lawmakers have told Trump they will only sign onto a new NAFTA deal that includes all three North American nations.
But Trump issued a warning Saturday to both Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Congress in a post on Twitter, writing he would go on without Canada and could unwind North American free trade if lawmakers would not support his approach.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1035905988682018816
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1035908242277376001
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nafta-breakoff-what-now-1.4806991
The renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement hit a rough patch Friday morning, after Trump's "off the record" comments about how the U.S. would not make any compromises and that any deal with Canada would be "totally on our terms."
For good measure, Trump repeated in public his threat to slap oppressive car tariffs on Canadian imports if Canada will not concede.
"I've never seen, in my experience, this kind of bullying — just abject bullying," said Jennifer Hillman, a former international trade adjudicator and general counsel in the U.S. Trade Representative's office. "I don't believe the majority of Americans support this."
Worse for Trump's supporters, it isn't delivering.
"This is a lot of talk of getting good deals, but we haven't seen any," she said.
US Presidents have often campaigned on ending or renegotiating NAFTA because it's a "bad deal", and then when they get into office they discover just how important NAFTA and free trade is to the economy and how it's actually a great deal and they change their mind on NAFTA. Trump is unique in that he doesn't listen to anyone and does what he wants, no matter what the consequences.
Trump also does not have Congressional approval to negotiate a bilateral agreement with Mexico and to rip up NAFTA. He's being a stupid fucking bully because he needs this deal to be signed or else he's going to be deeply embarrassed and his claims of being a dealmaker will be (once again) thrown into question by his absolute failure at properly negotiating a free trade deal. Trump also can't terminate NAFTA for six months. It's going to be hilarious watching Trump try and bully Republicans in Congress right before the midterms because they won't let him destroy America's closest trade relations in a baby tantrum. And if there's a blue wave, the deal is completely sunk because nobody except Trump actually wants this.
Also, thanks for stabbing us in the back for the manbaby in chief, Mexico.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/does-mexico-throw-canada-under-the-bus-1.4807073
WINNING
Congress's job is to interfere when you start to do stupid shit, they should've been doing it this whole time but haven't. Maybe they'll fucking start though now that you've called them out.
I hope Trudeau does not capitulate, no matter what. Let Trump's bullying blow up in his face. One more nail in his coffin. When he's finally in prison it'll be renegotiated and reinstated anyway.
Isn't it (ostensibly but whatever) congress's job to keep the president under control? Between this and his tweet where he bitched about Amazon using the USPS for their intended purpose, Trump is really losing his grip on reality.
Yep. But checks and balances doesn't mean anything when the other branches do whatever the president wants for their own self-serving purposes.
It's Congress' job to act as a check and balance on the President, and all trade deals the President negotiates must be approved by a two-thirds majority in the Senate.
Trump, however, does not see things the same way. He does not consider Congress an equal branch of government, he thinks of the Executive, and specifically him personally, as being the apex authority of the entire federal government with no peer houses to check him. He thinks Congress is there to serve him, just as he feels that his Justice Department should be protecting and serving him above all.
Man's a dictator at heart, even if he can't get away with being a dictator in practice.
Man, I wish I could have five minutes alone in a room with Trump. Not because I'd do anything to him. I just suspect I'd know precisely what to say to set him off and send him into a frothing, impotent rage. And I'd spend the whole five minutes prodding him exactly where I know I'd get to him the most. Some people dream about beating up their asshole boss. In my case, making the manbaby cry would be my fantasy.
He's far, far, far too gone for that to work. The man is so up his own asshole he folds spacetime.
You can't teach an old dog new tricks, and you can't break through a narcisisst's lifelong fortress of lies to convince him he's mentally ill and nobody likes him, he reflexively will call your very existence fake news and you'll become an unperson to him if you try.
I feel that next he'll start bitching about the fact that Pizza Hut makes pizzas or something.
"I came here for a hamburger, damnit!"
I don't think we can afford to let this one go. Like, quite literally we're in no position to not negotiate an actual fair deal and we'll have to try to pressure on anyone with any kind of influence on the process not to let the big orange fuck it up for everyone involved.
I'm still trying to figure out what exactly Canada did to deserve this treatment from Trump besides not sucking his cock.
He can see the walls are closing in on him, and he's determined to destroy as much as he can before he goes to jail.
It is, but currently congress is majority Republican, and no matter how much the party will pretend otherwise, Tinyhands is everything they want and they'd prefer to keep him in the white house as long as possible. If for no other reason than to keep pushing their agenda while he draws the attention away
If they wanted to stop him, they could have started doing a long time ago. They've had the power to reel him in since day one, they're demonstrated what they're capable of when they're in the minority, and the idea that they're anything but complicit while they're holding the majority is laughable
They're a bunch of complicit turncoats
He could literally shit on the Constitution and replace the American flag over the capital building with a Nazi one, and as long as he keeps pandering to the rich and racist they'll defend him.
Canada didn't swear Fealty to the Baby-In-Chief, long short and skinny of it.
The Toronto Sun literally had a Trudeau hit piece on its front page the other day(Aug 30) that tried to spin Trudeau as the actual antagonist, rather than Trump.
If Trudeau capitulates on this, and those treasonous fucks get their way, I'm gonna be livid. I'll take a few months/years of relative hard times, rather than see us bend over to appease our would-be overlord.
I feel sorry for the next government that has to come crawling back to every nation that Trump has done his best to alienate.
That's not going to help much. The rest of the world now knows that the US political system is broken enough that people like Trump can get into power, so why would they spend billions reworking relationships and deals when 4 years later another Trump can hop into the white house and destroy everything again?
I'm still convinced he's going to start tweeting launch codes and the identities of our spies before all is said and done.
Should he do that, that constitutes real treason. He could still hang for that. Don't get my hopes up.
Congress please interfere. one of your jobs is to hold the executive in check so please interfere.
The US will be unreliable for as long as the Electoral College is used. And the last time it was almost abolished the south blocked it since they didn't want to lose power.
They won't so long as the GOP hold the majority. Half of the GOP doesn't even like Trump, but they prefer to double-down on keeping their own party in power no matter what.
Imagine sucking so hard at being president that you manage to fuck up relations with Canada.
A fantastic ally and trade partner. Could not ask for a better neighbor. He still fucks it up. How is this a thing.
From what I've been able to glean, Trump's approach to partnerships is that they binary arrangements: Either he gets everything he wants, all of the time, or the other person is an outright enemy.
Because Trump doesn't care about the country, he cares about himself. He wants to appear to be tough on trade to feed his base raw meat and energize them ahead of the midterms. Midterms that have a large number of Republican candidates running on the platform of "I'm on Team Trump", and midterms that the President has personally positioned as essential to protecting him from Democrats holding him accountable for the ever-growing list of scandals.
So that means being a dick to Canada and theatening to blow up both countries' economies if he can't force a one-sided deal down our throats.
Oh, and also, after the G7 summit where Trump was a useless petulant baby, Trudeau embarrassed Trump by criticizing him right before his big summit with North Korea, ruining his attempt to look like he's a big tough guy who can hold back the entire G7 without breaking a sweat. Trump never loved Canada but ever since then he's gotten more active and intense in antagonizing Canada. International economic consequences over petty grudges from a petty manbaby-in-chief.
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