The Trump administration is holding out for a last-minute breakthrough in its talks with Canada over the administration’s trade with Mexico before a Monday deadline hits. Any such deal is seemingly a major long shot, though, following Trump’s comments indicating that talks have broken down.
“We reached a deal with Mexico. Why shouldn’t we be able to reach a deal with Canada?” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday at a forum hosted by the Hill. But if they couldn’t, he said, the administration was “confident” that the U.S.-Mexico deal would be approved by Congress. The secretary said that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer was currently briefing members of Congress on the deal details.
[Trump is cracking the Mexico-Canada united front on NAFTA]
Sources with knowledge of the situation, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the delicacy of the situation, said that negotiations with Canada were not off. However, none are currently scheduled and no one could point to any indication that a breakthrough was possible. Nevertheless, the administration is delaying until the last minute a decision on what to do should no deal with Canada be reached.
A decision one way or the other would have to be reached soon. Monday, Oct. 1, is the deadline for submitting the text of the U.S.-Mexico deal to Congress under the terms of the Trade Promotion Authority law. The administration is hoping that the threat of the submission of the deal with only Mexico would spur Canada to deal.
Any later, and the deal would have to be renegotiated with Mexico’s incoming president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist. “We don’t know where that would go at all,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Tuesday.
The White House has repeatedly said that Canada’s assent is not needed for the deal but has held ongoing talks for a month to soothe lawmakers concerned over any potential disruption to the North American Free Trade Agreement. On Wednesday, President Trump indicated that talks had completely broken down, saying, “We’re not getting along at all with their negotiators,” he said, and claimed to have rejected an offer to meet with Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The prime minister’s office said that no such request was made.
Despite this, Trump said that there was a “a good chance still” that a deal could be made. Representatives for the Canadian government did not respond to a request for comment.
