Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau subtly jabbed President Trump Friday during the signing of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, referring to the trade deal as a new version of the North American Free Trade Agreement instead of the name Trump gave it.
Trump has made doing away with the name NAFTA a major part of his effort to update the trade deal between the three countries. Trudeau instead repeatedly referred to the deal as a version of NAFTA.
“The new North American Free Trade Agreement maintains stability for Canada’s entire economy. … That’s why I am here today,” Trudeau said at the signing ceremony in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, while onstage with Trump. “The new agreement lifts the risk of serious economic uncertainty that linger throughout a trade negotiation process. Uncertainty that would have only gotten worse and more damaging had we not gotten a new NAFTA.”
The U.S. president has repeatedly said that the name NAFTA was itself a problem. “We’ll get rid of the name NAFTA,” he said in August. “It has a bad connotation because the United States was hurt badly by NAFTA for many years. And now, it’s a very good deal for both countries.”
Trump claimed Friday that NAFTA was officially a thing of the past. “With our signatures today we will formally declare the intention of our three countries to replace NAFTA with the USMCA,” he said prior to Trudeau’s remarks.
Canada was the main thorn in Trump’s side in reaching the deal on USMCA, which was originally reached this summer as a strictly bilateral deal between the U.S. and Mexico. The White House insisted that Canada’s inclusion wasn’t necessary, but engaged in talks in order to ensure easier passage of the deal through Congress. Lawmakers said Canada’s inclusion was necessary in order to prevent the deal from running afoul of the earlier NAFTA. It took several weeks of talks before a deal was reached between all three countries in late September.
Friction between the U.S. and Canadian negotiators often bubbled to the surface during those talks. “We’re very unhappy with the negotiations and the negotiating style of Canada. We don’t like their representative very much,” Trump said in late September. He was believed to be referring to Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, her country’s lead negotiator.
