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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2018
Click HERE for the September 28 quote from Mexico's Karen Antebi.
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USMCA: A NEW DEAL FOR NORTH AMERICA
"[W]e have successfully completed negotiations on a brand new deal ... [the] US-Mexico-Canada Agreement."
Donald J. Trump
October 1, 2018
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President Trump gives a lot of speeches, but we find ourselves returning again and again to two in particular. Both were given in the last couple of weeks. One was the October 1 announcement of an agreement, namely the new trilateral deal to replace NAFTA. The other was the elaboration of an idea, specifically, the President's strong belief in the superiority of cooperation among sovereign nations as opposed to "global governance," with enhanced deference to multilateral institutions. That elaboration was the heart of the President's September 25 address to the U.N. General Assembly.
Like everyone else involved in trade, we expect to comment on various aspects of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, both during this period when the final language is being worked out and then later when the agreement and implementing legislation are considered by Congress. We will begin that discussion here. Most of what we have to say today about the UN speech is in the Comment Section below. But we expect to return to it in later entries as well because it affects - infuses might be a better word - virtually every aspect of the Trump administration's trade policy and its dramatic initiatives.
Let's begin with a more extended version of today's featured quote. President Trump said:
"It is my great honor to announce that we have successfully completed negotiations on a brand new deal to terminate and replace NAFTA and the NAFTA trade agreements with an incredible new US-Mexico-Canada agreement, called "USMCA."
You have probably already read or listened to the President's full statement. Moreover, the issues he mentioned and some more he didn't are going to be reviewed countless time in the months ahead and from different angles. So, we are not going to rehearse them much here. We will, however, take note of the Administration's top conceptual priority. In the President's words:
"Now, we're not going to be losing our companies. That was, to me, the most important thing."
Dairy
The President's comments on the high profile issue of dairy - or more formally Canada's supply management system for dairy, eggs, etc. - are worth reviewing. In his remarks, President Trump noted that "The deal includes a substantial increase in our farmers' opportunities to export American wheat, poultry eggs and dairy." Then, later, a reporter asked him if dairy could have been a deal breaker. His response is worth quoting at some length. The President said:
"Yes. Dairy was a deal breaker. And now for our farmers it's substantially opened up much more.
"And I know they [Canada] can't open it completely. They have farmers also. You know they can't be overrun. And I fully - I tell them that. I say, 'Look, I understand. You have limits.' But they could do much better, and we've opened it up for our farmers.
"I think Justin Trudeau is a good person who is doing a good job. He felt very committed to his people and that's what he did."
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Let's go back now to some of the things President Trump said in his UN speech on September 25. The section that is of particular interest began with the declaration that:
"Each of us today is the emissary of a distinct culture, a rich history, and a people bound together by the ties of memory, tradition, and the values that make our homelands like nowhere else on earth.
"That is why America will always choose independence and cooperation over global governance, control, and domination."
Obviously, there are some very big issues here, starting with the question, what is global governance and how does it differ from cooperation? We will leave that for another day (and possibly) to other writers. We would point out, however, that Mr. Trump's emphasis on the idea that each leader is responsible for promoting the interests of his or her country gives him the flexibility to defend a compromise, as illustrated by his comments about dairy and Mr. Trudeau's need to protect the interests of Canadian farmers.
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As luck would have it, your editor still has in his possession the literature book that was used in his eighth grade English class. It is full of gems from Longfellow's Evangeline to The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. One of those gems is the short story The Man Without a Country by Edward Everett Hale. It is the story of an Army officer, Lieutenant Philip Nolan, who gets caught up in Aaron Burr's allegedly treasonous activities (Burr was acquitted) in 1805. At his trial, young Lieutenant Nolan shocked the court by blurting out, "Damn the United States. I wish I may never hear of the United States again."
And that was his punishment, to live out his life on U.S. Navy ships, never coming ashore in the United States, and never hearing any news of his country. The men and officers he sailed with could talk to him but they were under strict orders not to impart any news of America. The high drama of the piece comes while Nolan, in a social group is reading aloud on deck. He is reading from Sir Walter Scott's The Lay of the Last Minstrel. He doesn't know what's coming, and chokes up when he reaches the lines:
Breathes there a man with a soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said-
This is my own, my native land!
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RELATED EVENT - OCTOBER 17, 2018
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America's view of international cooperation has a special relevance to the topic of GBD's next event, which is on WTO Reform. The link will take you to the announcement for this session, which will be held from 3:30 to 5 PM on Wednesday, October 17, 2018. The same announcement includes the list of speakers and registration options.
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In the Rose Garden takes you to President Trumps Rose Garden remarks on October 1, in which he announced that the United States, Canada, and Mexico have come to a new agreement, the United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, which will replace NAFTA. This was the source for today's featured quote.
At the United Nations is a link to President Trump's remarks at the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly on September 25, 2018.
The Man Without a Country takes you to this short story by Edward Everett Hale, which was first published in The Atlantic in December 1863.
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©2018 The Global Business Dialogue, Inc.
1717 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Suite 1025
Washington, DC 20006
Tel: (202) 463-5074
R. K. Morris, Editor
Joanne Thornton, Associate Editor
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