The Beauty Pageant Gone Bad that Might Destroy North American Trade

Author John Norris examines the roots of President Trump's disdain for NAFTA.

At his latest somewhat unhinged public rally, Donald Trump declared of the North American Free Trade Agreement, “Personally, I don’t think we can make a deal because we have been so badly taken advantage of,” adding, “I think we’ll end up probably terminating NAFTA at some point.” This was a remarkably flip statement considering NAFTA involved more than a trillion dollars in trade between Canada, the United States, and Mexico in 2015.

Trump has repeatedly called NAFTA “the worst trade deal in the history of the country.” But since taking office, the Trump administration has pin-balled back and forth between claiming that it will totally overhaul the treaty and insisting that it is only going to “tweak” the agreement in what Vice President Pence, in his usual damage control mode, called a “win-win-win” for all parties.

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