This is a tale of two Politicos...
In the October 1 USA edition of Politico, the new NAFTA agreement was viewed through the lens of President Donald Trump's supposed braggadocio starting with the very title, "Trump hails 'historic' trade deal with Canada, Mexico" while being rather light on the details, making it seem that it was mainly Trump's opinion that the trade deal was "historic." In contrast the Politico Pro Canada edition of the same day went much heavier into the details which revealed just how successful Trump was in getting a better deal for the United States.
First the main Politico article which showed Trump boasting about a NAFTA agreement whose details are mostly left to the imagination:
President Donald Trump on Monday praised the new trade deal struck with Canada and Mexico to revamp NAFTA, saying it would restore America to the position of a "manufacturing powerhouse.”
Speaking in the Rose Garden, Trump ticked off ways the deal would help U.S. workers and companies, and criticized NAFTA as “perhaps the worst trade deal ever made.”
“Throughout the campaign I promised to renegotiate NAFTA, and today we have kept that promise,” he said.
...The president added that the deal would give U.S. farmers and ranchers — a key part of the Republican Party's political base — greater ability to sell goods in the Mexican and Canadian markets, including dairy products, wheat, poultry and eggs.
The new agreement would cover nearly $1.2 trillion in trade, which, Trump said, would make it the biggest trade deal in U.S. history.
Prior to the ceremony, Trump was already promoting the deal on Twitter.
Got that? The message here is that a boastful Trump was hyping the new NAFTA agreement. And what was he praising exactly? Well, for the actual details, not the "Trump said" obsession, of that you need to go to Politico Pro Canada which avoids the Trump as braggart fixation of the USA version.
THE BOTTOM LINE — Canada made modest gains, at best. The U.S. made very significant ones. Canada set out 10 major demands when it opened negotiations; in the end, it achieved roughly five — some key asks, like expanded work visas, failed to launch. The best news for Canada? It limited the damage. Of the five so-called non-starters the U.S. proposed last fall — dairy, procurement, autos, the sunset clause and the elimination of the Chapter 19 dispute system — all are either completely vacated or drastically pared back. In the end, what the U.S. walked away with is the opening up of sectors it wanted opened (online shopping and dairy) and protection against a sector it wanted a buffer against (Mexican auto production). On the whole, the U.S. achieved a series of small but significant victories.
Ah! And now we see why Trump was enthusiastic about the new NAFTA agreement with Canada but to find out why we had to go to Politico Pro Canada which lacked the agenda of the USA edition.
