The new President has vilified NAFTA and threatened to scrap the treaty. He can do that easily by giving just six months' notice to the other two signatories.
But he won't. For all he says, the United States, through its corporations, has profited handsomely from twenty years of NAFTA. For one thing, in the first five years of the treaty, Canada alone had hundreds of Canadian companies bought up by American investors. They weren't naive. The expected return in repatriated profits in those days was 15%!
Some one must have explained that to the Presidential candidate during the election, because partway along he switched from "scrap" to "renegotiate".
Let me tell you what part of the treaty he will be advised, pressed, or commanded to renegotiate. It will not be about trade in goods of any kind.
It will be the duration of the treaty. He will press to increase the locked-in term from six months to, say, twenty or thirty years, like former Canadian Prime Minister Harper's China treaty (31 years!) The aim will be to secure those investor protection clauses. for as long as possible
These so-called "trade" treaties over time always benefit the larger country, not the smaller one. And benefit corporations rather than workers. No matter what "trade" rhetoric is bandied about, the main objective will be to seal in those Chapter 11 investor protection rights. Want to bet I'm wrong?
Here's a cartoon from the early days of NAFTA. (Can't credit it. Just found it loose in a file). Today is seems even more relevant than it did then.
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