After his first meeting with Canada’s prime minister, President Trump tagged Mexico as his prime target in renegotiating the two-decade-old North American Free Trade Agreement. “We’ll be tweaking it,” Trump responded when asked about the impact on Canada. “It’s a much less severe situation than what’s taking place on the southern border.”
“On the southern border, for many, many years, the transaction was not fair to the United States. It was an extremely unfair transaction,” Trump said during a news conference with Trudeau. “We’re going to work with Mexico, we’re going to make a fair deal for both parties.”
Canada and Mexico are the second- and third-largest customers for U.S. farm exports, accounting for 30 percent of sales. They also provide 44 percent of U.S. food and ag imports. Exports generate 20 cents of each $1 in farm income, so farm groups worry about losing sales because of a change in trade rules through NAFTA or with other nations, such as China, the No. 1 market for farm exports.
Trudeau’s one-day visit to Washington, which included a working luncheon at the White House, was a sharp contrast to thorny U.S.-Mexico relations. President Enrique Peña Nieto cancelled a Jan. 31 visit in the face of Trump demands that Mexico pay for a wall along the border. In his first days in office, Trump said he would meet Peña Nieto and Trudeau to begin revisions to NAFTA, immigration and border security. The White House says if the United States cannot get a fair deal through renegotiation, it would withdraw from NAFTA.
Peña Nieto said on Feb. 1 that Mexico was beginning a 90-day period of internal consultations to prepare for NAFTA talks, pointing to a May launch of talks. Trump told senators early this month that he wants speedy negotiations but did not suggest a time frame. Nor was one mentioned specifically by Trudeau or Trump during their joint news conference.
“So when we sit down as we did today, and as our teams will be doing in the weeks and months to come, we will be talking about how we can continue to create good jobs for our citizens on both sides of the border,” said Trudeau. Trump agreed: “We have a very outstanding trade relationship with Canada.”
Canada was a leader in the WTO complaint, joined by Mexico, that led to repeal in 2015 of mandatory country-of-origin labels on packages of beef and pork sold in U.S. grocery stores.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said he “re-emphasized the importance of breaking down trade barriers and improving market access for America’s dairy farmers” during a meeting with Trudeau, who also met Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. CBC News said McConnell also discussed trade with Trudeau.
A member of Mexico’s Senate, Armando Rios Piter, told CNN that he would file legislation to shift Mexico’s purchases of corn to Brazil or Argentina, rather than the United States. It would be “a good way to tell them that this hostile relationship has consequences,” Rios Piter told CNN, which said Mexico imported $2.4 billion worth of U.S. corn in 2015. Mexico is the largest market for U.S. pork, poultry and dairy products as well as a leading buyer of corn and soybeans.