Commentary
There are already suggestions from the country’s premiers that Canada express its willingness to divide the existing United States-Canada-Mexico free trade agreement into one bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Canada and another between the U.S. and Mexico.
Donald Trump has made it clear he will not tolerate the Mexican practice of enticing American factories to just within the Mexican border, having disemployed their American employees, and then giving the American firms a tax holiday in Mexico, cheap Mexican labour to fatten their profits, and the ability to exploit existing free trade arrangements by exporting back into the U.S. both goods the Americans previously manufactured for themselves and the unemployment created in the U.S. by the relocation of the factories. It is clearly not Canada’s place to comment directly on these matters, but Canada is informally in considerable sympathy with the American position, and does not wish to run any risk of being confused with Mexico by the United States in terms of its trade methods and objectives….