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Washington, United States | AFP | US President Donald Trump vowed Monday not to exempt Mexico and Canada from new steel tariffs without a “fair” trade deal, but his chief negotiator warned the trio’s talks were not living up to expectations.
Speaking as US, Mexican and Canadian trade officials gathered in Mexico City to wrap up the seventh round of talks aimed at revamping the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Trump doubled down on threats he made on Twitter early Monday.
“No, we’re not backing down,” he told reporters after an Oval Office meeting with embattled Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. “There will be tariffs on steel for Canada and for Mexico.”
The US leader, who prides himself on his ability to negotiate business deals — and who said last week trade wars were “good, and easy to win” — linked his planned steel and aluminum tariffs to the ongoing talks with Mexico and Canada in his latest anti-NAFTA rampage on Twitter.
“Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum will only come off if new & fair NAFTA agreement is signed,” he said in one of a series of morning tweets.
Hours later, his top negotiator, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, warned in Mexico City that the latest talks had been disappointing.
“In spite of (our) hard work, we have not made the progress that many had hoped in this round. We have closed out only three additional chapters,” Lighthizer told a press conference.
“To complete NAFTA 2.0, we will need agreement on roughly 30 chapters. So far, after seven months we have completed just six.”
Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland for her part vowed to fight fire with fire if Trump went ahead with his tariff plans.
“Canada will take appropriate, responsive measures to defend our trade interests and our workers,” she said.
Canada, which has the most to lose as the top source of US steel to the US market, has called the tariffs “unacceptable.”
– Twitter bluff? –
Trump’s surprise announcement last week that he plans to impose tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum sparked a fierce global response.
Canadian and Mexican officials had raised the possibility the neighboring nations could be exempt, but Trump rejected that possibility and raised the stakes by holding the NAFTA talks hostage to the tariffs.
Mexico’s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo suggested Trump may not follow through.
“With this (US) administration, it’s important to wait for them to go from tweets to action. There’s still no presidential decree,” he said.
