Back when I was a young reporter, it was not uncommon for sources to call back after a long interview in which they spouted all kinds of things and say âThat was all off the record, of course.â
I notice bloomberg doesnât even seem to be dignifying the blather with a response.
Is this even legal?
"The Trump administration had insisted that it wanted a deal by Friday, beginning a 90-day countdown that would let Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto sign the pact before leaving office Dec. 1.
But under U.S. trade rules, the U.S. team wouldnât have to make public the text of the revamped agreement for 30 additional days, possibly buying more time to reach a deal with the Canadians. "
Are they saying they might change the deal to get Canada on it within that 30 days, or they canât change the deal after today but will try to get Canada on it in the next 30 days.
The fake Art of the Deal author tweets:
âWow, I made OFF THE RECORD COMMENTS to Bloomberg concerning Canada, and this powerful understanding was BLATANTLY VIOLATED. Oh well, just more dishonest reporting. I am used to it. At least Canada knows where I stand!â
âJust more dishonest reporting.â
If that were true wouldnât Twitler want to correct the record? He doesnât say he was misquoted, just that heâd allegedly made âOFF THE RECORDâ comments.
âAt last Canada knows where I stand!â
We all do, pendejo: Neck deep in the muck and mire, panicking, awaiting Muellerâs noose.
Itâs cute that you say that like it even mattersâŚTrump and the people around him donât really care about the law and bristle when they run into its boundaries. For a bunch of people who wrap themselves in the Constitution and its laws the Republicans sure donât care much about following it.
âWow, I made OFF THE RECORD COMMENTS to Bloomberg concerning Canada, and this powerful understanding was BLATANTLY VIOLATED. Oh well, just more dishonest reporting. I am used to it. At least Canada knows where I stand!â
Trump really fucked himself with this one.
Trump started a bunch of trade wars in his 1970âs version of economics, and it is hitting his base hard. People opposed to his actions on trade are spiking. A lot of his supporters are cautiously optimistic, willing to give him some time, as they think his approach of attacking âforeignersâ will yield results.
China is going to heat up big time, and cause real pay by the mid-terms, Europe he is not in a place to get anything done, his one hope was to get a draft NAFTA deal. The exiting mexican president was willing to punk for him and give some in return for trade piece, and Trump had to get a deal done by today to (a) get it to congress, and then hope he could ram it through congress before (b) Lopez Obredor came into power (who would not sign on due to the agricultural provisions in the bill). Trumpâs deadline was today.
Yet, he shot off his big fat mouth, because feeling better about himself and bragging to a Bloomberg reporter was all that matters. Someone in his administration leaked his comments, and he torpedowed any chance of a deal (even a not so hot deal) with Canada.
His âmexicoâ only deal is DOA in the senate. Major senators which big industries interegrated with Canada will opposed it (think Alexander and Corker, DeWine, and Johnson) and the WSJ has already come out and said it is a worse deal than NAFTA.
Yet, Trump really needs a win to change the direction of the mid-terms, which are looking worse and worse by the day.
Well he just fucked that up.
They arnât saying anything. It was a real deadline, and I donât think the submitted deal can be amended under the Senateâs rules, and someone will object. They are just making stuff up to try to cover for their failure here.
This was a REAL DEADLINE, and TRUMP just fucked it up. What a looser⌠
Iâm not commenting to suggest any doubt over your cred or what you commented - AOTs, there are lots of credible reports of government types calling or having their staff call reporters later to try to impose such nonsense.
But I donât think we can say thatâs what happened here. Itâs POSSIBLE that Bloomberg or someone there said effectively, Well scr*w you, Trump, weâre gonna leak this to a paper you canât intimidate.
Itâs also possible Trump World deliberately arranged for the leak, even asking Bloomberg to facilitate it in exchange for future access.
Why? Because Trump canât negotiate his way out of wet bed, never could, and the US end of this supposed NAFTA renegotiation is going to fail on every front, so the Bluster King resorted to his life-long approach of attempting to bull his way into being, to WILL-DOMINATE a replacement deal.
What we know is that NAFTA, after several years of rocky adjustment, settled in and has proved to work extremely well on MOST fronts - assuming, of course, fluid borders north and south.
But Trump wants to close the southern border with a wall, insane as that is on so many fronts, and somehow thinks he looks less stupid if he appears to close the northern border as well (Hint: he doesnât).
There are actually THOUSANDS of items that have been the subject of ongoing trade negotiations involving what time has done to erode and obviate some of NAFTAs features, and all 3 countries have been talking towards resolving those in a mega agreement that attaches to NAFTA or else throwing a bone to whoever happens to be POTUS at the time to look all presidential in taking credit for it. THATâS the context in which Trump dropped in via the 2016 election.
Iâve posted elsewhere in depth on this, so the short version is that, as expected, an auto parts tariff is now off the table. Thatâs why Trump made his big PUBLIC brag about showing Canada a picture of the Chevy Impala. He knew in advance that was purely for show AND that thereâd be an adjusted regime to deal with that whole area, having zero to do with him and everything to do with the cross-border transport of factory parts for multinational car making companies with operations on both sides of the US Canada border. So much for the phony brag.
Note the continuance of the dairy farm products issue. That also isnât a huge problem, at least between the US and Canada. The problem is the US team is seeking to reduce export inspection standards on US raw milk and cheese produce in order to accommodate NOT U.S. produced dairy produce but MEXICAN produced dairy produced in facilities owned by multinational corps. In short, team USA wants the legal ability to dump into Canada excess low grade dairy displaced by Mexican production entering the US. Can anyone remember what the Boston Tea Party was all about? So now the US is in Englandâs position on tea and Canadaâs in the U.S. position. How times change.
Anyway, Trumpâs problem here is that Canadaâs got a national food standards act that Trudeau and his Liberal party have exactly zero desire to scr*w around, or else theyâll be gutted in Canadian parliament.
There IS actually a solution to this, but it requires regulatory investment by the US to ensure Mexican produce displacing US domestic produce doesnât actually get imported into Canada. So the solution is available, but involves imposing regulations, which Trump doesnât want, and hiring people to do the enforcement work - the Dairy police if you will. And Trump sure as HELL doesnât want the flack from having US dairy cops show up on US dairy farms to âharrassâ US dairy farmers.
Note thereâs no reference to Trumpâs beloved steel and aluminum tariffs. I think team USA has already been able to convince Trump thatâs not going anywhere - Canada isnât going to agree to kill itâs aluminum and steel production companies, and besides Trump actually doesnât need to gut Canada on this front when he can just gut Japan, South Korea, Germany, Australia, etc. So Canadaâs not going to have to compromise on this.
The BIGGIE tho, the reason Trumpâs acting so crazy on this, is the dispute resolution process. Trump wants unquestioned unquestionable arbitrary power on this, and that IS something that can be negotiated away. But I donât believe for a second that Canada would do it. Not that Trudeauâs any genius at trade or anything really, but team Canadaâs trade folks are stronger on this than on anything else and Trudeau is a believer in the Deep State.
What this all does tho is buy Trump some PR and some time. Heâs gonna try and strong arm the Senate on the idea that he can get Trudeau to back down. IDK - Trumpâs lost a few senators and some of those are leaving, so PROBABLY Trump wonât get his precious approval. But what wonât get discussed much if at all is the extreme bogusity of the Mexico-US deal: incoming Mexican preznit doesnât want it because heâll take the heat for it, and whatever inducements the outgoing Mexican preznit received arenât transferable. So the Senate is more likely to play Blame Canada than crap on Mexico, because focusing on the southern border process is too fraught.
Anyway: no deal coming, AFAICT.
Uh, yeah, thatâs not going to happen. Trump, once again, fucked himself in the ass.
I guess the silver lining here is that Trump is really speeding along my ultimate goal: Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.
And they clearly pay attention to Canadian politics⌠if they were looking to give Trudeau political cover for the economic damage the US very much can do to us, he just did a great job.
Knowing the shallowness of trump, I have always figured that trumpâs problem with Canada is that Trudeau is young and more handsome than he ever thought of being.
Stand strong, Canada. We know that Trump wants a deal that only benefits the USA. This is entirely in accordance with Trumpâs personality and mental illness. I think Canada should insist that there be national health insurance in the USA for a deal that would pass.
Adviser to Trudeau: Sir, Trump has threatened to hijack our trade agreement.
Trudeau: What is his first demand?
Adviser: Ammunition and hostages.
Trudeau: Is that all?
Adviser: No, he wants bandages and fresh socks.
Trudeau: Why?
Adviser: I canât say, but it appears he has already shot himself in both feet.
You said: "What we know is that NAFTA, after several years of rocky adjustment, settled in and has proved to work extremely well on MOST fronts - assuming, of course, fluid borders north and south.
This comment is extremely self-centered and selfish. NAFTA created the worst emigration of farmers and families out of Mexico into the USA ever. That is because NAFTA enabled the USA corporate food world to rip off all Mexican farmers from their land and impoverish them. So they fled north to survive, where the fascist regime herded them like cattle into prisons. The prison laws enabled the government to pay $26K / prisoner to the prison owners, all in this agreement together to rake in $billions in incarceration fees / feeds from their government stooges. This is one of several reasons why the USA has the record-breaking prison population - the government handed the prisons 100,000s innocent people by way of herding dying Mexicans into the USA prisons using NAFTA. This is only 1 of several genocidal, money making agendas behind NAFTA.
It took years to negotiate the terms of the original NAFTA and tRump wants to âreplaceâ it with some slapdash, back of the envelope bullshit. We are all so royally fucked. It is going to take decades to unwind the the shit avalanche that tRump is creating.
Remember that giant sucking sound predicted by Ross Perot? Who knew he was talking about Donald Trump?
trumpâs notion of "negotiating is âI win, you loseâ not âletâs be beneficial to both as good neighborsâ.
Compromise is not in his lexicon. In fact statesmanship does not exist for trump, just low minded hit man mafioso thuggery. He has no idea about trade, where or how things like cars are made for example nor, and more importantly, is he willing to learn from folks who know more than he does. Heâs the genius he thinks so why learn anything else.?
Trumpâs method of negotiating from a position of strengthâŚ
