Analysts: Trump must balance politics with technical wins in NAFTA redo

摘要

President Trump, elected on a platform that denigrated NAFTA and a promise to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States, may have trouble locking in victories for his base while achieving technical upgrades to the trade deal that benefit all three partners, business leaders and analysts said Wednesday. "The threat to pull out of NAFTA was not a negotiating tactic; it was quite real," said Christopher Padilla, an executive at IBM and former Commerce Department trade under secretary, citing conversations with administration officials in the wake Trump's dalliance with withdrawal in April. "That possibility remains quite real," he added. "So I think we cannot - in the business community or those of us who care about the region - delude ourselves to thinking that we're going to be able to get away with a few minor things and declare victory," he said at a July 12 event on NAFTA hosted by the American Society and Council of the Americas. "There's going to have to be, politically, for the president to declare that this is a success, probably more manufacturing, investment and jobs in the middle of the country in the United States, not in the region generally, and if he can't then I think there's a possibility we can be in for an impasse. And an impasse could lead to a disaster."