Thread: Trump and NAFTA: another broken campaign pledge?

NY MAG

Trump Signals He Will Seek Relatively Modest Changes to NAFTA

By Eric Levitz

March 30, 2017

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to “rip up” the North American Free Trade Agreement. Now, he appears content to make a few tears around its edges.

A draft proposal of the White House’s goals for renegotiating the agreement, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, would leave many of its most controversial elements in place. While Trump as a candidate decried the threat that “international bankers” pose to American sovereignty, his proposal would retain NAFTA’s Investor State Dispute Settlement process — an arbitration system that allows international investors to sue countries (often, for passing laws that disadvantage their business interests) before private tribunals whose rulings cannot be appealed.
The proposal would also do nothing to address “currency manipulation” by America’s trade partners, another concern that figured prominently in Trump’s stump speeches.

Ironically, many of the draft’s proposed changes would make NAFTA more closely resemble the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 12-nation trade agreement among Pacific Rim countries that Trump withdrew the United States from, shortly after taking office.

Full story here:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...-to-nafta.html

Are we getting the idea yet, that we, the people are going to have to force the change?

They say what Trump's plan doesn't do on NAFTA but didn't say what it does. This is the Democratic Beast at work. Trump's plan restores right to buy American and tariffs to balance trade deficits. Wast here something else we wanted? If so, I'm not aware of it.

Trump never talked about currency manipulation by Mexico or Canada. It was the Chinese he accused of currency manipulation. The Chinese aren't part of NAFTA and the currency problem with China will have to be addressed by the WTO of which they are a member.

One disappointment after another!