Donald Trump’s hard-line tactics in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement appeared to be finally working this week, after more than a year of lower-level talks. On Monday, the president announced he had reached a trade deal with Mexico to replace the agreements under NAFTA. “We’re going to call it the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement, and we’ll get rid of the name NAFTA,” Trump said, adding that negotiations on including Canada, which is a party to the existing agreement, in the new deal would begin shortly.
But on Friday morning, the ongoing negotiations with Ottawa were blown up after the Toronto Star published what it claimed were off-the-record comments Trump had made the previous day in an interview with Bloomberg. According to the Star’s source, Trump was asked if he was willing to compromise with Canada. “Here’s the problem. If I say no — the answer’s no. If I say no, then you’re going to put that, and it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal,” Trump allegedly said. Here’s more from the Star:
But the Star is not bound by any promises Bloomberg made to Trump. And the remarks immediately became a factor in the negotiations: Trudeau’s officials, who saw them as evidence for their previous suspicions that Trump’s team had not been bargaining in good faith, raised them at the beginning of a meeting with their U.S. counterparts on Friday morning, a U.S. source confirmed.
The Star was not able to independently confirm the remarks with 100 per cent certainty, but the Canadian government is confident they are accurate.
When THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked Bloomberg if one of its journalists leaked the off-the-record comments to the Star, a spokesperson responded with a written statement: “When we agree that something is off the record, we respect that.”
The White House, meanwhile, declined to comment about the quoted remarks—whether the president said it and whether someone at the White House leaked the comments to the Star.
Who could have provided the comments to the Star? President Trump tweeted Friday afternoon that the agreement to keep his off-the-record comments off-the-record waswere “blatantly violated” by Bloomberg:
Wow, I made OFF THE RECORD COMMENTS to Bloomberg concerning Canada, and this powerful understanding was BLATANTLY VIOLATED. Oh well, just more dishonest reporting. I am used to it. At least Canada knows where I stand!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 31, 2018
Star reporter Daniel Dale writes that Bloomberg accepted Trump’s request for those comments to be off the record. Had they not done so, they would have been free to publish them. Doing so against the wishes of the president, however, would have run the risk of being shut out by the White House press office. Leaking the comments to a competitor like the Star would have released the information but could also bring the same risk of damaging the relationship with the West Wing. It’s possible Bloomberg leaked the comments, but it’s not obvious how likely it is.
What about at the White House? Could someone in the West Wing have made a recording or transcript of the president’s full remarks to Bloomberg, as an internal record? If that is the case—and, again the White House has declined to comment on this to me—then it’s also possible someone at the White House provided the off-the-record comments to the Star. If that’s true, there is someone in the administration who is motivated to sink the trade deal with Canada.
The Star’s report comes on the day the Trump administration said it expected a decision by Canada and its prime minister, Justin Trudeau, on joining the new trade deal. This soft deadline corresponds with Trump’s desire to ink the new deal before the new Mexican president, Andres Lopez Obrador, takes office on December 1. New trade deals are required to undergo a 90-day review by Congress.
