Adjunct Professor Matt Gold was quoted in a Politico article about NAFTA renegotiation under the Trump administration.
[L]egal experts say Trump and his advisers have undermined their own national security case by tying restrictions on Canada and Mexico to their cooperation in NAFTA talks. Those two countries were officially exempted from the tariffs for national security reasons, but Trump continued to tie their exclusion to the outcome of NAFTA negotiations in his remarks before signing the tariff orders.
“When the president publicly states that he’s willing to exempt Mexico and Canada if they give him concessions in NAFTA negotiations, he’s undermining the weak legal argument they have to begin with,” said Matt Gold, a former U.S. trade official under President Barack Obama who is now an adjunct law professor at Fordham University.
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The WTO’s national security exception leaves open a number of ways a country can justify a trade restriction. Mattis’ note would likely preclude the use of one of those national security exceptions, which can be interpreted to mean the supply of military equipment.
In this case, the likely defense would be under an “emergency in international relations,” Gold said.
That envisions a scenario in which the world is in the grips of a major conflict to the point where ocean shipping is disrupted and steel and aluminum imports are cut off, he said.
“It’s a weak, bordering on absurd, argument,” Gold said of the administration’s rationale.