NAFTA gets rebranded, again!
This is a dream come true for all those blue-collar workers in the Rust Belt who voted for Trump. What more could they possibly desire when it comes to the trade deal that ruined their lives, except for a name change?
Speaking at the White House on Monday, President Trump said he wanted to change the NAFTA name to the U.S. Mexico Free Trade Agreement.
I don't know about you, but I'm relieved that a trade agreement with the name of NAFTA no longer exists. Because it was the name that was the problem, amirite?
After threatening for months to blow up Nafta, President Donald Trump seems to have settled for a modest rebranding — so far as trade with Mexico is concerned, anyway. His new “United States-Mexico Trade Agreement” would leave arrangements that have spurred innovation, growth and economic integration of the two countries mostly intact.
But wait! Trump doesn't just half-way rebrand. He's the kind of bigly president that will do something crazy and rebrand a product TWICE!
In a joint statement, U.S.Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said the accord would be renamed the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement).
They asserted that USMCA would result in freer markets and fairer trade.
There you go. The problem with NAFTA, other than the name, was that it wasn't free trade ENOUGH!
To put this another way, the globalists are pleased.
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 U.S.-Japan 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.
Hurray?
I'm certain all of those unemployed blue-collar workers were just waiting for a rebranded NAFTA, but with more TPP.
Note also that many parts of the deal are likely to bear a resemblance to TPP.
The brilliance of Trump is that he rebranded not just once, but twice.
I can think of only one other organization that rebranded twice in order to create more separation from the damaged brand - Blackwater.
Comments
Somebody call a cartoonist (Photoshop maybe?)
He's looking more like Obama every day.
On to Biden since 1973
But did Obama ever rebrand TWICE!
That's what makes Trump a "maverick".
The Key improvement, I'd say...
...is that you can't pronounce the name of the cosmetically revised agreement, USMCA. That will prevent a lot of bitching among disenfranchised labor and the middle class. They won't have NAFTA to kick around anymore, with off-the-cuff slogans and tired cliches. Rustbelt labor activist posters will definitely lose their punch and, at first glance, it would look like they are protesting the US Marine Corps. Score one for the DC think tanks.
Other than that, this beligerent negotiation rapidly transformed into a game of softball. God only knows where the meaningful language is hidden in the agreement that "interested parties" produced, but the fact is both Mexico and Canada had some serious leverage. They were both being courted by China — and China was proposing some irresistible investments in their economies and infrastructure. In a few short years, China was poised to become the largest trading partner and best friend of both countries.
So, you are right on, Gj, with the snap reference to the TPP.
That's all a well-informed citizen needs to know sbout this deal. The US is determined to block trade with China in the Western Hemisphere and along the Pacific Rim in order to damage China's economy and undermine its influence. I wonder when it dawned on President Trump how badly he fucked up when he made killing the TPP one of the first official acts of his presidency. He certainly has been schooled by the Neocon cockroaches he appointed into his cabinet. How I would love to be there when he finally figures out that much of his cabinet and most of his advisors are the Deep State he has been searching for.
Heh. Good times.
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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
The "liberal media" is selling it
as a radical change.
NYTimes: Trump Just Ripped Up Nafta. Here’s What’s in the New Deal
WashPost: U.S., Canada and Mexico just reached a sweeping new NAFTA deal. Here’s what’s in it
But the Time headline is more real: Trump's NAFTA Replacement Largely Maintains the Status Quo on Free Trade
To be fair, at least Trump proved that the Dems have been lying all these years; NAFTA could be renegotiated.
There's a certain type of legal client
...who likes to start negotiating after he signs the contract.
Really, the US can renegotiate or breach any contract that it wants to. Salt Treaty, Paris Accord, Iran Agreement, and Nafta. No country can do a thing about it because they use the Dollar for international trade and surrender to SWIFT. These countries have lost their sovereignty and are subject to US sanctions on a whim. They can put a stop to it any time they want to. Someone should remind them that "First the US came for Afghanistan/Iraq/Libya and they didn't say a thing. Then the US came for Syria/Ukaine/Yemen and they looked the other way...."
Meanwhile, the US corporations and the US as a nation can and do sue any country that resists US asset-stripping. The US has made it crystal clear that if you try to bring legal action against it, the US will freeze your assets and drone your asses. In the case of Malaysia, the one nation that successfully tried the Bush regime in court for war crimes — well, their passenger jets started to vanish into thin air or they got blown out of the sky under the eye of four geostationary satellites, and no one had any pictures of what happened. So, your national airline goes belly-up after 60 years of a perfect safety record.
The TPP and the TTIP blossomed under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's term. One was designed to block China and Russia from the Pacific trade and the other would block their trade in the Atlantic. This was a done deal under Obama, and Hillary was going to carry the ball over the goal line after she was inaugurated. For one shimmering moment it seemed like US would be assured of their globsl rule as a single Empire — and there would be no future where Eurasia prospered and thrived.
A lot was at stake. That's why the Deep State and their political tools du jour went berserk with FISA and spying and sedition. It was just too big to fail. It still is. All of DC plans to gaslight the whole thing until it goes away.
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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
It's like the miles long
caravans of opium-laden donkeys and scooters baring the record harvests. Nobody can see them. Or maybe it's the Taliban air Force moving product.
"their passenger jets started to vanish into thin air or they got blown out of the sky under the eye of four geostationary satellites,"
You seem to consistently have sources with stuff I didn't know of, and/or seriously high analytic skills. I regret you can't post the latter. But if somewhere you can post the former (I don't want to hijack this essay)...
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Not a problem
This is open source intelligence that is shared by journalists who cover the international beat, as I was at that time. This information was gathered in 2014, just after the US and NATO conspired to overthrough the democratically elected government of Ukraine. It was a watershed moment for American cognition, as well, because after the Ukrainian coup the Americans were assaulted with a gale of propaganda that has no historical equal, and it has not let up since. Where and when US war games were taking place was well known and discussed in military magazines, and the military constantly used satellite images to justify their violent interventions and destruction. In doing so, they confirm their surveillance assets. Let us keep in mind, as well, that it is Russia who ,carried our spy satellites into space so their existence would surprise them least of all. Indeed, our military would be blind without them. Here is Robert Parry discussing the same issue I introduced above, back in June, 2014:
The M-17 situation remains unresolved, along with a dozen more provocations toward Russia, including blame for an alleged DNC hack and the Skripal poisoning, where the key evidence was either withheld by the US government, or its existence has been a complete fabrication. Nonetheless, Russia was economically attacked by the US and its allies as "punishment."
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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Also NAFTA/Nasty
it's just too close. Thanks for the point about China making offerings to Canada and Mexico, and the need to block those as motives.
Floating around, and I think at Strategic Culture website (?) , is a look at sanctioned Russian companies. A lot of it affects their airplane manufacture, that could seize the world markets, as they are introducing useful innovations.
It really is all about the money. (Except for the neocons who are in it for twisted pleasures.)
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
One problem that I see . . .
is that USMCA is so much harder to pronounce than NAFTA. Maybe, once the T gets the TPP provisions in place, he will rename these agreements to reflect what the really are: NYARF (Now You Are Really Fucked).
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass