By Ryan Hanrahan
Reuters’ David Shepardson reported that “President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the U.S. might not renew its free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico and criticized trade deficits with those countries, although he said he was talking with their leaders about the matter.”
“The three countries need to approve a renewal of their existing agreement by July 1 or signal their intention to exit the pact, a process that would take 10 years and would buy time for alterations,” Shepardson reported. “‘I’m not looking to renew it,’ Trump said at the White House. ‘We don’t need anything that Canada has. We don’t need anything that Mexico has, but they need everything that we have. They have to treat us better.'”
Bloomberg’s Courtney Subramanian and Hadriana Lowenkron reported that “the Mexican and Canadian governments did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The next round of US-Mexico talks is set for this month, followed by a third in July. The US and Canada have not yet launched formal negotiations.”
“Trump has privately mused about whether he should exit the pact, but has not yet publicly threatened to do so in his second term. He regularly made such threats during negotiations in his first term,” Subramanian and Lowenkron reported. “The administration has also given preferential treatment to the trade agreement, exempting most USMCA-compliant goods from Trump’s across-the-board tariffs, but undercutting the agreement by applying sectoral levies, such as on vehicles, a key industry upon which the trade deal was designed.”
Source : illinois.edu