WASHINGTON (AP/CNN) – President Donald Trump says he intends to terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement and call its replacement “the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement” – a name that would exclude the third NAFTA partner, Canada.
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Trump made the comments after announcing an “understanding” with Mexico that could lead to an overhaul of the 24-year-old trade pact, which Trump has called a job-killing “disaster.” Details of the U.S.-Mexico agreement were expected to be unveiled later Monday.
“Our farmers are going to be so happy”, Trump told the small throng of media that gathered for the conference call with Mexican President Nieto. Trump went on to say that Mexico had promised to “immediately begin purchasing as much farm product as they can”.
The president says he will be calling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Trump says, “If they’d like to negotiate fairly, we’ll do that.” He also threatened to tax Canadian auto imports to increase the pressure on Canada’s government. “You know they have tariffs of almost 300% on some of our dairy products – so we can’t have that. We’re not going to stand for that”, Trump said.
Trump says: “We could have a separate deal (with Canada) or we could put it into this deal.”
On Sunday, President Trump tweeted that “our relationship with Mexico is getting closer by the hour” and on Monday morning, he tweeted: “A big deal looking good with Mexico!”
Negotiations on rewriting the three-country NAFTA agreement began about a year ago.
The 24-year-old trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada generally prevents the three parties from imposing tariffs on imports from one another. But Trump has called the agreement “the worst deal maybe ever signed” and moved ahead with tariffs earlier this year.
In May, the United States imposed steep tariffs on steel and aluminum from much of the world, including Mexico. In response, Mexico slapped tariffs on $3 billion of US goods, including steel, pork, apples, potatoes, bourbon and different types of cheese.
