FELDSTED - Two years after the change was to happen, they announce the change they promised five years earlier and bury overrun costs as best as they can

Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have sat on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 2.0 ratification to avoid giving President Trump a “win” with an improved NAFTA. Minor changes by the Congress are window dressing to justify the delay in US approval of the deal.

Christina Freeland

Trips by recently appointed Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, Christina Freeland, to the US and Mexico, are also window dressing. This is the tiresome nonsense that governments love. They announce a grand change to programs with great gusto. Two years later they re-announce the same change in an economic update.

Two years after the change was to happen, they announce the change they promised five years earlier and bury overrun costs as best as they can while expecting us to cheer their accomplishment.

NAFTA never died; the agreement kept working while the “negotiations” bored us stiff. Now our taxpayers will shell out a couple of billion dollars to cover the losses of Canadian dairy farmers and our steel and aluminum smelters and foundries while our economy drops a few hundred million a year in auto parts we once made and are now made in the USA.

The US won major concessions while boosting its manufacturing sector and economy. We came out battered at best.

NAFTA amendment negotiations started in August 2017. In November 2018 (15 months later) we were told the amended agreement was complete and ready for ratification. Now we are told that the deal is again ready for ratification again (12 months later, 27 months in all).

“This has been a long, arduous and at times fraught negotiation,” said Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who was in Mexico City for the elaborate signing ceremony.

Give us a break ducks; original negotiations took 15 months of on and off meetings. Ratification delays have taken another year of intermittent negotiations; nothing lasting long enough to cause a sweat. You are regurgitating the euphoria of government announcements on NAFTA in November last year and they have gone rancid in the interim.

At best we survived the negotiations and have nothing to cheer over.

John Feldsted
Political Commentator, Consultant & Strategist
Winnipeg, Manitoba