Thread: CAN TRUMP’S HANDLERS CONVINCE HIM NOT TO NUKE NAFTA?

CAN TRUMP’S HANDLERS CONVINCE HIM NOT TO NUKE NAFTA?

Despite the president’s vow to scrap it, the deal appears to be safer than ever.

• BY ABIGAIL TRACY

JANUARY 15, 2018 1:09 PM

Throughout his bid for the presidency and into his first few months in the Oval Office, Donald Trump regularly derided the North American Free Trade Agreement, at one point characterizing it as “the worst trade deal ever signed.” But in the ensuing months, as “populist” factions within the White House have waned in influence and Canada has ramped up its hugging initiative, Trump has apparently begun to take the political and economic ramifications of pulling out of the deal more seriously. “I’d rather leave it,” he told The Wall Street Journal in an interview last week, though he threatened to terminate the trade pact entirely if it cannot be renegotiated to his satisfaction. The president struck a similar tone while speaking to thousands of farmers in Nashville last week, stopping short of threatening to dismantle the trade deal. “On NAFTA, I’m working very hard to get a better deal for our country and for our farmers and for our manufacturers,” he told the audience, many of whom were reportedly wearing “I support NAFTA” pins. “It’s not the easiest negotiation, but we’re going to make it fair for you people again. We want to see even more victories for the American farmer and the American rancher.”

One driving force behind the president’s softening stance is his concern that pulling out of NAFTA would bring a swift end to the stock market rally, which he has adopted as an alternative barometer for his popularity. To the Journal, Trump dismissed the idea that the market would take a hit, saying that he was “not sure about world markets, but I can tell you I think the American market would go up if I terminated NAFTA and renegotiated a new deal.” But privately, Trump has his doubts about the impact on the stock market, according to sources familiar with Trump’s thinking who spoke to Axios.

Fear of cutting into corporate profits is a powerful motivator for Trump. But the president’s gradual change of heart also illustrates how malleable his presidency has become in the hands of his establishment allies. On the campaign trail, Trump intuitively grasped the political benefit of raging against NAFTA, even if he never demonstrated a clear understanding of the policy itself. In office, however, the president has confronted an entrenched political class that is both more cunning and better informed. Lawmakers have carefully approached him to describe the benefits their states receive as a result of cross-border trade, playing to the president’s sympathies for blue collar workers. Earlier this year, administration officials impressed upon Trump that many of the states that would face steep agricultural and manufacturing losses fell within “Trump country.”

Trump’s apparent shifting stance could be a sign that such efforts by more measured voices within his administration have succeeded; the president was similarly swayed by the more rational of his aides over the Iran nuclear deal, which he vowed to tear up on the campaign trail but has yet to kill. The White House has not yet changed its official position, leaving Trump an easy opening should he revert to his baser instincts. But it suggests that he can be talked out of his campaign promises by his handlers in Washington, if he can be convinced that he’s still secured some kind of win. Whether small tweaks to the terms of trade with Canada and Mexico will be enough to buy the president’s gratification may be determined by their salesmanship.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/donald-trump-nafta-negotiation

No, because Trump has no handlers. This is his show. All the way. Lock, stock and barrel. He wants to renegotiate NAFTA if he can and Wilbur Ross is very brilliant on this and may be able to do so, but it he can't, then Trump will terminate it. Trump needed to pass the tax cuts before he could in good faith pull the plug on NAFTA. To bring industries back home, you have to have a competitive environment for them or they could go broke which doesn't help anyone.

Aand the lefties who write for Vanity Fair don't know what Trump's actual positions was or they're deliberately lying about it. Trump never said he was going terminate NAFTA, he always said he would either renegotiate it or terminate it, because the terms of NAFTA require a negotiation of grievances before you can terminate it anyway.