Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday he is willing to discuss the idea of renegotiating the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, a decades-old trade deal that Donald Trump has vowed to revisit in the first 100 days of his administration.
“If Americans want to talk about NAFTA, I’m happy to talk about it,” Trudeau told reporters, noting that he and Trump spoke briefly by phone Thursday morning, during which he congratulated the Republican on his election and invited him to visit America’s northern neighbor.
Trump “expressed warmth towards Canada” and their conversation marked a “strong beginning to what will be a constructive relationship,” Trudeau said.
“I told my kids that our relationship with the U.S. is a deep and positive one,” he added. “We’re going to work constructively together on this relationship because that’s what people expect.”
Trump’s vehement opposition to NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific partnership earned him tremendous appeal among working-class voters in Rust Belt states during the course of his presidential campaign. It also gave him a line of attack against Hillary Clinton, who praised TPP as the “gold standard” of trade agreements at the beginning of her campaign only to oppose it months later.
Trudeau told reporters it is important for Canada and the U.S. to keep each other as strong trading partners going forward.
