David A. Andelman, visiting scholar at the Center on National Security at Fordham Law, wrote an op-ed for CNN about Trump’s NAFTA renegotiation.
The NAFTA 2.0 agreement, or USMCA as Donald Trump wants to call it — and he would appear to have won the right to call it anything he wants — ought to be sending chills up the spines of diplomats and trade negotiators around the world. Trump largely got his way. And now, no one can tell him his bull-in-a China-shop way won’t work.
Should Sunday night’s sudden 11th-hour approval of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement give hope or dismay to Europeans hoping to do a trade deal with America, to China fearing a trade war with the United States, or to Iran and Europeans hoping to do any sort of side deal without American participation? In fact, from this perspective across the Atlantic, this NAFTA reboot should only reinforce the newly apparent reality. Trump’s unhinged-from-precedence-in-your-face negotiating style actually works.