President Donald Trump hailed Canada on Monday after the two countries forged a last-minute deal to salvage their trilateral NAFTA accord with Mexico, marking a key victory in the U.S. leader’s effort to shake up global trade.
The deal, announced on Sunday, is a reworking of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, which underpins $1.2 trillion in trade between the three countries. Trump had described NAFTA as a bad deal for Americans and threatened to eliminate it as part of his “America First” agenda.
The new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is aimed at bringing more jobs into the United States, with Canada and Mexico accepting more restrictive commerce with the United States, their main export partner.
While changing NAFTA and bringing down U.S. trade deficits was a top Trump campaign pledge, Sunday’s agreement largely leaves the broad deal intact and maintains current supply chains that would have been fractured under weaker bilateral deals.
Trump, who said he would hold a news conference at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) on Monday, on Twitter called the U.S. agreement with its neighbor to the north “wonderful” and “a historic transaction.”
via Reuters
