Goodbye NAFTA

Hello USMCA

Take out the 'S' and we can sing it.

So how much did we lose by? When does our Sudetenland get officially transferred over to the bastards?

We didn't back down on the things we wanted, and we got them.

Don't count your chickens before they hatch.

Dropping this today was a major mistake by Trudeau. If we do actually have an agreement in principal, I doubt the US or Mexico would have cared if the announcement was delayed by one day.

The current agreement is already being sold as sacrificing Quebec for Ontario.

Doesn't matter if that is true or not, the optics are brutal, and Trudeau should have known better.

Not sure how the optics are brutal. Every deal has concessions. This is about Canada, not only Quebec...so they can fuck right off with their perpetual whining nonsense.

Woo hoo, cheap milk.

Too bad, so sad, Chrystia - no snowflake clauses.

Woo hoo, cheap milk.

With its new trade deal, Canada surrenders sovereignty to a bully: Neil Macdonald
So first, Clause 32. It's long-winded and uses code language, but basically, it says that if Canada wants a trade deal with China, it has to notify the Americans about any negotiations, and tell them the substance of those negotiations, and submit the text of any deal, "including any annexes and side instruments" in advance, for American scrutiny, and then, like a puppy, await Washington's verdict.

If the Americans don't like the deal – and it's a safe bet the Americans aren't going to like any deal that binds Canada to a rival economic giant – Canada will be summarily excluded from the new version of NAFTA, which will revert, at America's whim, to a bilateral deal with Mexico.

It's a breathtaking thing for Canada to accept, but unsurprising. It's of a piece with the Trump approach: brutalize allies and partners, insult them and club them into submission with crude threats like Trump's "motherlode" tariffs on autos and auto parts.

To paraphrase Trump's coarse inauguration speech, fair trade stops here and it stops now. America first, ladies and gentlemen.

Clause 32 doesn't actually mention China. It instead uses the euphemism "non-market country," and stipulates that each party "shall inform the other parties," but there's no doubt about what a non-market country means — China — or who Canada is meant to tell. At the moment, U.S. President Donald Trump is prosecuting an all-out trade war with China, and he doesn't want any allies getting cozy with the other side.

But it's more than that. The United States has clearly heard the voices in Canada and other Western countries urging their governments to diversify and strengthen ties with other trading partners as a shield against Trump's America-first bullying. The Americans consider Canada and Mexico to be client states, and aren't going to stand for any Canadian assertions of independence.

"This is all about the Americans laying down a marker," says a Canadian lawyer who's been inside the NAFTA renegotiation. "They are effectively saying 'We are going to control North America.'

So how much did we lose by? When does our Sudetenland get officially transferred over to the bastards?