On Wednesday, the White House announced that President Donald J. Trump was considering rethinking his position that the United States would withdraw from NAFTA. It appears that Trump id still ready to pull out of NAFTA but decided to hold off on a decision after President Peña Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada requested he rethink his position.
The White House statement read:
Late this afternoon, President Donald J. Trump spoke with both President Peña Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada. Both conversations were pleasant and productive. President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries. President Trump said, “it is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation. It is an honor to deal with both President Peña Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better.
Trump has been slamming the NAFTA agreement since his presidential run began. As far back as September 2015, Trump said of NAFTA, “We will either renegotiate it or we will break it,” calling it “a disaster … Every agreement has an end. Every agreement has to be fair.” Trump doubled down on his rhetoric a year later, saying, “We are going to start with NAFTA, which is causing so much damage to our country.”
Except that Trump is wrong; NAFTA is actually good for the United States.
As Senator Jeff Flake pointed out:
Further, NAFTA, which links the economies of the United states, Mexico, and Canada, created the world’s largest free trade area of 450 million people, with a gross domestic product of $20.08 trillion. Between 1993-2015, trade between the three members quadrupled from $297 billion to $1.14 trillion, thus lowering prices for consumers.