Justin Trudeau speaks on new NAFTA: Live video
After Donald Trump spent about an hour praising the new continental trade deal, the PM and his foreign minister take to a podium in Ottawa
NEW YORK, NY – MAY 17: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a news conference at the Canadian Consulate General, May 17, 2018 in New York City. Earlier in the day, speaking at the Economic Club of New York, Trudeau said the sticking points to renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is the United States’ demand for a sunset clause and that the deal be renegotiated every five years. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland react the day after Canadian negotiators came to a new NAFTA in principle—known as USMCA—after a long weekend of final talks. Earlier today, U.S. President Donald Trump praised the agreement as a huge achievement, and credited Trudeau and his senior advisors for their professionalism.
Freeland spent more than a year forging a new deal. Read Ottawa bureau chief John Geddes’s exhaustive account of her work to save NAFTA.
The trade agreement finalized in the late hours of Sept. 30 between Canada and the U.S. amounts to a triumph of the desire to do a deal over what often seemed to be irreconcilable differences.
From the outset of these renegotiations, the dissonance between the tough-talking American rhetoric and the soft-pedaling Canadian tone made it seem like U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer—U.S. President Donald Trump’s top guy on the NAFTA file—and Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland—entrusted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to safeguard Canada’s most vital trading relationship—must be talking about entirely different sets of talks.