Canada would be wise not to rush or fold on NAFTA

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on August 30, 2018.

The typical wind down to summer in the last week of August this year features a ratcheting up of trade talks in North America.

The United States and Mexico have apparently signed a bilateral trade deal, it was announced grandly at the White House on Monday.

Canada, one line of reasoning goes, is now over a barrel and needs to get a similar deal done before Labour Day.

Not really, and we should hope not.

Canada should be prepared to wait it out. While time might not be on our side, it’s certainly not on the side of the American president. In the complex and largely one-sided relationship in North American, that might be Canada’s best bargaining chips.

This week has brought a new twist in pot-boiler negotiations to update the North American Free Trade Agreement which so far have taken more than two years.

It’s turned us all into armchair trade negotiators to some degree, trying to discern the strategy of America’s self-declared negotiator-in-chief with varying levels of success.

At times he’s lambasted the talks, threatened to walk away, taken extreme positions, driven wedges, gone over the top and then walked back.

Boil it down and it’s plain that Trump wants a win to stand on as elections are looming this fall in the United States.

This week some commentators were quick to predict dire consequences for Canada, which rushed back to Washington to examine the basic tenets of what’s only a preliminary agreement between the U.S. and Mexico.

Opposition parties, led by the Conservatives, were quick to say the Trudeau government has been outwitted.

They are in reactionary mode right now, but it’s hard to believe Trump is willing to carve Canada out of the agreement.

The international business community doesn’t seem to think so. The Canadian dollar actually rose on the news this week.

That’s alongside a boast that Trump is willing to dismantle the highly integrated, highly valuable auto sector in hopes of winning a better deal for milk producers in swing states that helped him win the presidency in 2016.

He’s objected loudly to Canada’s supply management system for milk and dairy — an issue also seized upon by factions of the Conservative Party of Canada for different reasons — in hopes selling his leadership in America’s dairy land.

It’s absurd not to call that “overplaying a hand.”

So should we be giving Trump such a wide berth?

That’s a big question not to be answered by the faint of heart.

After two years of talks on a three-country agreement, the sides were likely down to the key issues some time ago.

Trump says he will send the deal to congress in 30 days, which happens to be five weeks before the congressional mid-terms in the United States.

He’ll benefit either way, deal or no deal with Canada.

If Canada signs on, his high-pressure tactics a big win, no matter the content. If not, he’ll claim he’s booted us out.

Another unsettling reality, though, is that the best Canada could ever do in the short term is to mitigate damage. That’s a stance no national leader can take publicly, especially en route to a bargaining table.

Every world leader has spent two years attempting to limit the damage that Trump could inflict on their country.

And you can’t blame Trudeau for taking the same tact.

In the end, though, Canada could wind up having to make the best out of a bad situation.

Rushing a deal at this point, or folding in the face of U.S. pressure, will only make a bad situation worse.

(Collin Gallant is a News reporter. To comment on this and other editorials, go to https://www.medicinehatnews.com/opinions.)

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