[Cog]

Lol. Now Canada is saying it is a deal that has zero effect and a month ago was saying agreeing to it would be a disaster. Keep telling yourself that Canucks. Tarriffs brought you to the table because you knew you could never beat the US in a trade war. China will figure that out as well. Nothing wrong with caving when you know you can't win. Maga

Everyone wins with this new deal, your leftist PM notwithstanding.

[rockdoc123]

Lol. Now Canada is saying it is a deal that has zero effect and a month ago was saying agreeing to it would be a disaster. Keep telling yourself that Canucks. Tarriffs brought you to the table because you knew you could never beat the US in a trade war.

Please show us who was saying it would be "a disaster"? As I've pointed out many of the things the US wanted changed stayed the way they were. Note there is no sunset clause, dispute resolution remains, rules on culture remain...all issues that the US said had to be accepted or no deal.
As to trade war.....what planet are you from? Nobody "wins" a trade war and the losers are people in both exporting and importing countries because they bear the burden of increased costs through rising prices. As an example, Ford CEO Hackett noted that the steel tariffs Trump imposed on Canada have cost the US automobile industry $2 billion and those costs will eventually have to be passed onto the consumer.
As to Trumps claims of several weeks ago that a 25% tariff on autos from Canada would make a lot of money for the US I suggest he needs some schooling in economics. Who is paying for those tarrifs...US companies who want those vehicles to resell who will either pass the increased cost onto US consumers or will write down their taxes as a consequence of increased operating costs. Car manufacturers have stated they wouldn't move factories from Canada to the US as the costs are still prohibitive to tear apart a well constructed and efficient cross-border supply chain and the US manufacturing capacity is already at 90% or so meaning they still need to import cars from elsewhere (Canada, Japan or Europe).

[Cog]

So why did Canada bend on the deal? Something your leftist PM said would never happen.

You bent the knee just like Mexico did because you know we could destroy you with tarriffs. Yappy dogs nipping at your heels are amusing, but sometimes you have to kick them to remind them who the alpha dog is. Don't feel bad, a lot of world leaders haven't got the point yet. The USA bows to no one.

At least not anymore. Welcome to the new reality of America First.

[rockdoc123]

So why did Canada bend on the deal? Something your leftist PM said would never happen.

Not sure what you have been reading but your trump delirium seems to have addled your brain if you think this wasn't a two way street with respect to give and take.

What did Canada give up?
1. 3.5% access to milk products. This compares fairly well with the increase that was negotiated with Pacific partners in that trade deal. Trudeau was trying to protect this industry in order to secure his Quebec vote for next years federal election. It wasn't something most Canadians cared about.
2. additional access for eggs and poultry
3. an additional 2 years on drug patent protection

What did the US give up?
1. they didn't get the deal they wanted which would give US commercials full access to Canadian television (part of the cultural protection that remained from NAFTA)
2. they did not get to scrap Chapter 19, it was their intent to force all disputes to be settled in US court
3. the sunset clause was not included, something Trump at one point said was a deal breaker
4. they wanted an additional 4 years on drug patent protection and settled for 2 years

So exactly how is this a big win for the US? Like most trade deals it ended up being a negotiation with each party giving something up in exchange for something else. Seemingly a non-event.

[Cog]

If it's a non event why are you complaining about it?

[rockdoc123]

If it's a non event why are you complaining about it?

where did you see someone complaining about the results? Merely said not sure why people would characterize this as a big new deal or a big win for the US. It is neither.

You seem to be the one with a distorted view of what the outcome was.

[Plantagenet]

NAFTA is now dead. Perhaps we should change the name of this threat to the USMC Treaty Thread (i.e. US Mexico Canada).

trumps-instincts-triumph-on-trade-

The midnight Sunday deal between U.S. and Canadian negotiators was a decisive victory for President Trump’s unconventional approach to trade. Even the administration’s fiercest critics are calling the revisions significant. For the first time, Mr. Trump and his allies can point to significant progress toward his core campaign promise of renegotiating trade deals to the benefit of the U.S. workers.

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement requires that cars be made with 75% North American components to escape tariffs. Forty percent of each car must also be manufactured in facilities where workers earn $16 an hour or more on average. Crucially, Canada has also cracked open the door to its dairy markets for American farmers.

The new USMC treaty doesn't solve every problem that NAFTA had, but it does make some incremental progress on some issues. AND that is significant, IMHO. After decades of being told it was impossible to renegotiate the onerous provisions in NAFTA, Trump has shown that diplomacy isn't static and existing treaties aren't eternal. He has shown that countries can still get together and work together to reform provisions in existing treaties that aren't ideal. And that is a good thing, IMHO.

Cheers!

[rockdoc123]

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles ... ium-canada

Trump’s trade brinkmanship has offended allies, sown economic uncertainty, and achieved almost nothing. Hooray?

On Monday President Donald Trump announced the end of Nafta, the trade agreement he’s repeatedly called a “disaster” for U.S. workers, and hailed its successor, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, as the greatest trade deal ever seen. As you might therefore expect, the new agreement is just a lightly tweaked version of the old. Despite the president’s theatrics, Nafta lives on.

That’s good — because, far from being a disaster, free trade across North America serves the interests of all three countries. But Trump’s USMCA has a downside. It was achieved only after months of needless economic uncertainty and the trashing of America’s reputation as a reliable partner.

Some of the tweaks in USMCA are good, some not so good, but the new pact mostly affirms the existing arrangements.

 

Globalists Will Love Trump’s New Nafta Deal

Despite the fanfare, the agreement doesn’t change much.

Despite the new name (the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA) dropping any references to trade, let alone freedom, the tariff rates on imports from Canada and Mexico are still a mass of zeroes. The main new element — the abolition of a variety of milk Canada introduced last year to support its domestic dairy industry — is ultimately an anti-protectionist move. The main old element is some fiddling around Nafta’s rules on automotive trade which, as we’ve argued previously, aren’t likely to change much.
That suggests an emerging playbook for the Trump administration’s trade agreements. As with the revised U.S.-South Korea deal announced last week, the achievement is declared to be historic while the changes made are cosmetic.

The danger of President Trump’s trade stance is the possibility it will lead to the collapse of Nafta, a breakdown of the World Trade Organization, or outright decoupling between the world’s two biggest economies. The outcome of the North American and Korean negotiations suggests something more positive: that Washington is happy to agree some minor modifications to existing agreements, declare victory, and go home to fight the midterm elections

[Plantagenet]

the tariff rates on imports from Canada and Mexico are still a mass of zeroes

Of course. Thats the whole point of a free trade treaty. Don't you even know that?

Unfortunately, under the old treaty Canada decided to unilaterally put tariffs on some US goods entering Canada. However, under the new treaty the Canadians have backed down and removed their tariffs. Thank you Canada for coming to your senses and removing your tariffs.

Now that we've cleared that up that little problem, we can go forward into the light together

Cheers!

[rockdoc123]

Of course. Thats the whole point of a free trade treaty. Don't you even know that?

Perhaps you should discuss it with the Bloomberg writer? The point he was making is there has been little change.

Unfortunately, under the old treaty Canada decided to unilaterally put tariffs on some US goods entering Canada. However, under the new treaty the Canadians have backed down and removed their tariffs. Thank you Canada for coming to your senses and removing your tariffs.

OK it is pretty clear you don't understand the deal at all. First off supply management (ie. dairy and poultry) were not a part of the original NAFTA agreement.

In this updated NAFTA Canada allowed extra access of 3.5% by value for milk products as well as additional access for poultry and eggs above existing quotas. Estimates are that will net the US an additional 0.0003% of GDP compared to what they would have had if they had signed the Trans Pacific partnership agreement. There was only ever a dairy tariff on products in excess of a quota that was set because Canada manages its dairy industry by matching supply to demand whereas the US tries to do the same through subsidies. The US sold ~$700 MM of dairy products to Canada in 2017 versus ~$180 from Canada to the US. Those milk products were either subject to zero (mostly) or 7% tariff. The US does not export into Canada above the quota so in fact no one pays the 270% tariff Trump rants about, in fact, they pay essentially zero tariff. Canada has supply management to avoid the US and other countries dumping milk products which they overproduce into the market and causing prices to fall. With no subsidies in place, this runs the risk of serious hurt on the dairy industry. Although Trump wanted supply management removed, it remains in NAFTA 2.0.

So in reality the US is no better off wrt dairy products than if they had stayed in the Pacific Trade Agreement. Not only that but no sunset clause, Chapter 19 dispute resolution remains, no additional access to Canadian television. But according to you....mission accomplished, the US is the most powerful country and everyone bows down to our demands, we really made those Canadians pay. Put a sock in it and get in touch with reality. The Bloomberg articles I posted hit the nail on the head...much to do about nothing.

[Tanada]

Historic Achievement: Labor Union Backs Trump USMCA Trade Agreement

The AFL-CIO, the largest labor union in North America, has endorsed President Trump’s United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), showing its first public support of a trade deal in decades.

In a historic feat for Trump, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka announced that the labor union would be endorsing USMCA, which the White House has crafted to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

“Make no mistake, we demanded a trade deal that benefits workers and fought every single day to negotiate that deal,” Trumka said in a statement. “Now we have secured an agreement that working people can proudly support.”

Trumka continued:

“The USMCA also eliminates special carve-outs for corporations like the giveaway to Big Pharma in the administration’s initial proposal and loopholes designed to make it harder to prosecute labor violations,” Trumka said.

The AFL-CIO endorsement is a victory for Trump’s economic nationalist agenda that has sought to raise wages for America’s working and middle class by tightening the labor market through increased immigration enforcement and taking the U.S. out of a job-killing free trade spiral with NAFTA, as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris Climate Agreement.

As Breitbart News has chronicled, decades-long free trade deals, NAFTA, and China’s entering the World Trade Organization (WTO) eliminated about five million American manufacturing jobs and 50,000 U.S. manufacturing plants since 1994. American manufacturing is vital to the U.S. economy, as every one manufacturing job supports an additional 7.4 American jobs in other industries.

Free trade advocates, like former Vice President Joe Biden, claimed at the time that NAFTA would create a million U.S. manufacturing jobs in the first five years. Instead, nearly a million American jobs have been certified by the federal government as being lost directly due to NAFTA, according to data gathered by Public Citizen. These are only the U.S. jobs that the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program recognizes as being lost to free trade and does not indicate the actual number of jobs lost.

ARTICLE

[Cog]

The Dems tried to take credit for the USMCA deal even though they held it up for a year. Anything to deny Trump a win on the economy.