Trump and Trudeau talk trade and arrange next step: Spicer

It will be very interesting to see how Trudeau handles these talks with Trump.

And they're already talking about setting up talks to renegotiate NAFTA.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/trump-says- ... -1.3252128

On his knees, with his arse rather high up in the air.

I don't give a shit what anyone says. NAFTA was never designed to be an economic windfall for companies and corporations who wanted to maximise profits from good to obscene by moving their production facilities to Mexico where, an auto worker with a $3.50 an hour wage is considered a high paid worker.


It was designed to facilitate unencumbered trade between countries. So, much like that misanthropic fuck up called the EU, this trade agreement has morphed into something it was never intended to be. So, love Trump or hate him he's right that it's high time to revisit NAFTA.

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Since you don't like manufacturing jobs you won't complain when Trump moves a bunch of them back to the USA, right?

I don't remember hearing any of that.

I do remember Chretin saying he would renegotiate it, won an election
saying he would renegotiate it, and then they added Mexico.

Don't remember anyone in Canada agreeing to it, or getting a vote on that.


For all the social reprogramming you go on about... it's all BS.

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in about ...............................................



Yeah but nothing has changed since then.

Of course not. But, as Springsteen said, "these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back". You can't bring them back. And you shouldn't try.

But why should I expect anyone in Trump's administration to listen to actual economists? He's already going down a protectionist road. A road that's been proven, time and time again, to be detrimental to economic prosperity. As Chuck Davenant wrote "the benefits of keeping a nation more cheaply supplied with foreign imports far outweighs the damage done to domestic employment." He succinctly stated that protectionist measures were "needless, unnatural, and can have no effect conducive to the public good. They encourage inefficient domestic industries with artificially high prices and throw good money after bad."

The grandfather of trade economics, Henry Martyn, noted that protectionists, by equating gold with wealth, repeat the mistake of King Midas. Precious metals are useful only because they can be exchanged for things we want. A nation's true wealth was defined by how much it consumed: "Bullion is only secondary and dependant, Cloaths and Manufactures are real and principal riches. Are not these things esteem'd Riches over the World? And that Country thought richest which most abounds in them? Holland is the Magazin of every Country's Manufacturers; English Cloth, French Wines, Indian Silks are treasur'd up there. If these things were not riches, they would not give their Bullion for 'em."

A nation's manufacturing base is a national security asset. Our ability to produce steel for consumer goods is critical to our ability to be able to pivot from a consumer economy to a war time economy.

Trump understands this and is taking steps to ensure our national security.

Of course it wasn't. It was designed so they could ship their stuff here without penalty so we could ship our stuff there without penalty.
The companies discover they could move production from here to there and take advantage of it AND those $3.50 auto wages, so they did. The was completely twisted to their advantage and workers on both sides were taken advantage of.
The TPP would've made this even worse once we and those $3.50 Mexican workers had to compete with 60c Sri Lankans. But addressing only one end is not the solution, corporations are stateless they'll move ALL production elsewhere and there could be less or NONE here at all.

That may be what happened but that's not really what it was designed for.



http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-ag ... x?lang=eng

The problem here is that we raised the standard of living for the Mexicans by taking away the higher paying jobs that Canadians and Americans did and gave it to them so they could earn $3.50 and hour which made certain Corporations obscene amounts of profit..

Raising someone else's standard of living by destroying your own doesn't seem to be the best way to keep your country vibrant and economically sound.