Former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn stole a document off of President Trump’s desk in the Oval Office in order to prevent him from exiting a trade deal with South Korea, and reportedly claimed he would do the same thing to prevent Trump from exiting the the North American Free Trade Agreement, according to a new book by Bob Woodward. It is not clear if Cohn actually stole the NAFTA documents.
Trump reportedly had a document formally pulling the U.S. out of the trade agreement with South Korea on his desk when Cohn, a supporter of free trade policies, simply grabbed it and walked off with it, according to excerpts of the book “Fear: Trump In The White House,” published in the Washington Post Tuesday. The president apparently never noticed they were missing.
Cohn reportedly promised a colleague he would repeat the trick in April 2017, when Trump had a letter drafted formally pulling the U.S. out of the NAFTA trade deal. “I can stop this. I’ll just take the paper off his desk,” Cohn told a White House colleague.
It is not clear if Cohn actually followed through on the threat, however. The Post’s excerpts don’t explicitly claim that he did. News reports at the time stated that Trump was talked out of signing the document by members of his cabinet, primarily Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. Calls by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggesting renegotiation instead were also reported factors.
Cohn resigned in March as director of the White House’s National Economic Council.
