Trump Thread

[Montmorency]

Nafta required automakers to produce 62.5 percent of a vehicle’s content in North America to qualify for zero tariffs. The new agreement raises that threshold, over time, to 75 percent.

A real breakthrough!

For the first time, the new agreement also mandates that an escalating percentage of parts for any tariff-free vehicle — topping out at 40 percent in 2023 — must come from a so-called “high wage” factory. The agreement says those factories must pay a minimum of $16 an hour in average salaries for production workers.

Doesn't sound like this would benefit many on the continent, if the factories just leave the continent. Why not rules that actually rein in big business?

Perhaps the biggest sticking point in negotiations over the last month was the issue of Canada’s protection of its dairy market, including limits on imported dairy products from the United States and government support that gives Canadian products an advantage on international markets against American ones.

“Dairy was a deal breaker,” Mr. Trump said on Monday.

The new agreement gives the United States victories on both fronts. It gradually opens the Canadian market to more exported American dairy products, including “fluid milk, cream, butter, skim milk powder, cheese and other dairy products.” Canada agreed to eliminate a program that helps Canadian sellers of certain milk products, at home and abroad.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/01/cana...-industry.html

Removal of the dairy Class 7 in Canada, which was only created after Trump's inauguration, and covers the following products: milk protein concentrate, skim milk powder and infant formula. Access to 3.6% of the Canadian dairy market. About as much as TPP would have granted.

The TPP deal gives access to 3.25 percent of Canada's dairy industry while the new USMCA deal provides the U.S. with about 3.6 percent of total Canadian milk production under a tariff-free quota.
[...]
"The Canadian government actually has given [the Americans] less than what I expected that they would give," said Leblond. "I expected something a bit above 5 percent, and at some point I heard the Americans were asking for 15 percent. So in the end the deal is at 3.6 percent. I see that as a win for Canada."

This is the great re-negotiation?

It's pretty much just NAFTA with a new name and worse bilateral relations in the long-term. Will this even be approved by Congress, let alone Canada and Mexico?

Among the small-but-significant items in the new agreement are a measure to push Mexico to make it easier for workers to form and join labor unions, steps to allow American financial services companies better access to Canadian and Mexican markets and a provision to extend the intellectual property protections of American pharmaceutical companies selling prescription drugs in Canada.

Without looking deeper, the first sounds good, second sounds neutral, and the third has always been overwhelmingly bad. The US-driven international copyright/patent/trademark regime needs to come down.