Some "out takes" on a nice article concerning NAFTA.

I realize that you Trump supporters seldom read the links or anything he has not told you how to think about, but this is not all anti Trump. It is a realistic assesment of the situation.

"In his apocalyptic campaign speeches, Donald Trump routinely cited two catastrophic messes he would clean up as president: Obamacare and NAFTA. Then his push to undo Obamacare became his first policy fiasco in the White House.

Now Trump may be poised to repeat history with NAFTA."
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"But there are striking similarities between Trump’s approach to Obamacare and his approach to the North American Free Trade Agreement, the 23-year-old pact with Mexico and Canada that he’s called the worst trade deal in history. The parallels include his over-the-top dystopian attacks on their disastrous stupidity, his over-the-top utopian pledges to replace them with a terrific alternative to be named later, and his blithe confidence that his negotiating partners would give him what he wanted.

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[B]The demise of the Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare has inspired a lot of mockery about “the closer,” about Trump’s inability to flex his “Art of the Deal” negotiating muscles in the Washington arena. But the failure of Trumpcare was mostly a failure of substance, not tactics. It was doomed not by Trump’s incendiary tweets or tone-deaf demands but by the impossibility of reconciling his exuberant promises with real-world plans, as well as his inability to compel cooperation or compliance from people who don’t work for him."[/B]

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In fact, a major overhaul of NAFTA could prove to be even more elusive than the repeal of Obamacare. Congressional Republicans scuttled repeal even though they all opposed Obamacare—and most of them do not oppose NAFTA. Even more daunting, before Trump even tries to sell Republicans on an improved NAFTA deal, he’ll have to forge that deal with Canada and Mexico. And it’s hard to imagine why Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto would risk the wrath of his people by granting concessions to the American politician who called them rapists and demanded a border wall to keep them out of the U.S.

Last week, a draft surfaced of the Trump administration’s letter to Congress laying out its goals for renegotiating NAFTA, featuring a much more measured tone than Trump used while blasting trade deals on the campaign trail. That doesn’t mean he’s abandoned his contentious approach to trade. The letter carefully left his options open, and when he signed two symbolic trade-skeptical executive orders last Friday, he echoed some of his campaign bombast about foreign negotiators fleecing dumb Americans. Still, when the NAFTA venue shifts from public proclamations to backroom negotiations, Trump might struggle to achieve even modest progress for U.S. businesses and workers, much less the fantastic victories he’s promised.

For Trump, NAFTA Could Be the Next Obamacare - POLITICO Magazine