The globalist modus operandi of handing over to the president immense powers to act unilaterally without Congress may now come back to bite them. During the recent presidential campaign, President-elect Donald Trump often railed against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), charging that it was hollowing out American industry, costing hundreds of thousands of Americans good-paying jobs, and promising to do something about it were he to be elected.
Turns out, the provisions of NAFTA may very well allow President Trump to act on his own to change tariff rates, force negotiations to modify the pact, or even withdraw the United States from it.
With NAFTA blamed for job losses in the industrial Midwest, Trump was able to crack the so-called Blue Wall of the Democrats, taking the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio in the election. It is the best a Republican candidate has done in this area, sometimes referred to as “the Rust Belt,” since Ronald Reagan was on the ballot.
In October, Trump vowed to begin the process to either force changes in NAFTA or even scrap the agreement. And he can do so without congressional approval.
Chapter 22 of NAFTA permits each chief executive of the three members of NAFTA (the United States, Canada, and Mexico) to exit the deal, simply by giving six months' written notice.
Scott Miller of the Center for Strategic and International Studies admitted that Trump has the power to take the United States out of NAFTA, on his own, without any approval by Congress: “Congress has delegated authority [on trade] to the president over the last 100 years.”
But Miller predicts that President Trump would face stiff opposition were he to make good on his threat to end American involvement in NAFTA. He cautioned that Trump’s promise to impose higher tariffs on imports from selected countries such as China and Mexico to protect domestic industry would lead other nations to retaliate by placing tariffs on U.S. exports.
Miller added that North America now has an “integrated supply chain,” and thus, withdrawal from that supply chain would hurt American companies.
Mexican and Canadian officials have already spoken out against any changes in NAFTA. One Mexican official said, “We do not see the need to renegotiate NAFTA. We believe it has been an extremely successful agreement.”
No doubt it has been — for Mexico. But what about for the United States and American workers?
Writing in Forbes magazine in 2014, Joann Muller, an international automotive analyst, said that in the previous five years, new car and truck production in Mexico had nearly doubled, from 1.7 million vehicles per year in 2009 to an estimated 3.2 million vehicles in 2014.
Eighty percent of Mexican-produced cars are exported, with about two of every three sent to the U.S.
It is little wonder that the Mexican government thinks NAFTA has been a highly successful deal.
NAFTA was agreed to by Congress during a lame-duck session in 1994 (raising fears by its
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