WASHINGTON — Canada is back in a re-negotiated NAFTA and the main railroad advocacy group in the U.S. says that is a good thing. Late Sunday, online news site Politico was among the first media outlets to report that Canada had agreed to sign ...
http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2018/10/01-aar-voices-support-for-canada-joining-new-trade-agreement
Brian Schmidt, Editor, Classic Trains magazine
...and we Canadians averted and dodged one big ugly disaster at the last second. Impala anyone?
Reading various sources in Canada about the new USMCA trade deal the general consensus is that we didn't have a gun to our head, rather we had a gun in our mouth! Nonsense. It's more like we got a good lesson in what trade is. Our demands for 'Gender issues' and 'Climate Change' issues being tied in to trade was nothing more than preening and sanctimonious deception and pomposity.
Our media is horrendously unfair, agenda driven. Canadians by and large for the most part "live in a fantasy land that only has a tenuous relationship with the rest of the planet". --National Post
Sadly I agree with that. But....not all, not all of us. Some of us see through the group think.
The deal is done, the crazy loopy demands are toast, and we can get back to being buddies. Railroads have always led the way with this from Day 1.
Now if I can just convince CN to paint everything in the US 'Grand Trunk' and CP paint everything US 'Soo Line', well that would be just better.
MiningmanReading various sources in Canada about the new USMCA trade deal the general consensus is that we didn't have a gun to our head, rather we had a gun in our mouth! Nonsense. It's more like we got a good lesson in what trade is. Our demands for 'Gender issues' and 'Climate Change' issues being tied in to trade was nothing more than preening and sanctimonious deception and pomposity. Our media is horrendously unfair, agenda driven. Canadians by and large for the most part "live in a fantasy land that only has a tenuous relationship with the rest of the planet". --National Post Sadly I agree with that. But....not all, not all of us. Some of us see through the group think. The deal is done, the crazy loopy demands are toast, and we can get back to being buddies. Railroads have always led the way with this from Day 1. Now if I can just convince CN to paint everything in the US 'Grand Trunk' and CP paint everything US 'Soo Line', well that would be just better.
The take I am hearing is the USMCA is nothing more than a renamed NAFTA. Obama named the agreement NAFTA so the name had to be changed.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
You are dead wrong on that Balt.
NAFTA, was named and signed in 1991 by President Bush the elder and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. It had been started in 1988 by Ronald Reagan. It was a hot contentious election issue for the Mulroney government.
We in Canada, lost an enourmous amount of manufacturing jobs that decimated entire areas, especially in Ontario, in what turned out to be the prophetic words of President Bush 41 " a new world order". Jobs and factories went overseas, certainly stopped inflation but it was a nasty spiral downward. Had zero to do with Obama. It just 'was' during his terms.
The new USMCA agreement is radically different. The trade deficit between Mexico and the USA was significantly in Mexicos favour but that has been levelled, still in their favour but much less. Wages for Mexican auto workers will rise quite a bit.
The deficit between Canada and the US was much less, sometimes you win, sometimes we win. The nasty thing was what I call ' The Cheese Wall'... our 300% tariff on dairy products to protect wealthy mostly Quebec dairy farmers. That has now been breached. Dispute mechanisms, limits on this and that, and cultural protections have been changed a lot.
This was a template for other deals and a lineup of forces to battle the Chinese in trade in the future, a shot across their bow to them.
Meet the new NAFTA, nearly the same as the old NAFTA. Some updating that was overdue, and some tinkering around the edges, but otherwise pretty much the same deal.
It seems the tinkering is economically negative, overall, but not horribly so. A big bullet dodged. The good news is that the WH free-traders seem to have edged out the Peter Navarro camp. Hope it stays that way.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.