For the group of people meant to be enemies of U.S. President Donald Trump's trade agenda, the revised North American trade deal reached shortly before the stroke of midnight Sunday looks pretty good.
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. That dynamic bodes rather well for the Japan-U.S. bilateral talks announced last week, not to mention the simmering trade war with China. For the globalists so often bashed in Trump-era rhetoric — and this columnist would count himself among them — that's good news.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.