World News
Trudeau won’t travel to Washington to mark start of renegotiated NAFTA deal
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will not join his North American counterparts in Washington, D.C., this week to celebrate the coming into force of the three countries’ renegotiated trade pact.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, will not travel to Washington to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador this week, the…
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will not join his North American counterparts in Washington, D.C., this week to celebrate the coming into force of the three countries' renegotiated trade pact.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will not join his North American counterparts in Washington, D.C., this week to celebrate the coming into force of the three countries' renegotiated trade pact.
“While there were recent discussions about the possible participation of Canada, the prime minister will be in Ottawa this week for scheduled cabinet meetings and the long-planned sitting of Parliament,” Chantal Gagnon, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister's Office, said in a statement.
The updated NAFTA deal, called CUSMA in Canada and USMCA in the United States, came into force on July 1. U.S. President Donald Trump is hosting Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Washington for a bilateral meeting on Wednesday.
Trudeau is attending a virtual cabinet retreat today and tomorrow, and Finance Minister Bill Morneau is delivering what he has called a “fiscal snapshot” on Wednesday.
Asked last week whether he would attend the Washington meeting, Trudeau said that COVID-19 posed an obvious concern, given that Canadian public health rules would mean he would have to quarantine for two weeks upon his return.
But Trudeau also mentioned a nagging trade issue with the United States.
“We're obviously concerned about the proposed issue of tariffs on aluminum and steel that the Americans have floated recently,” he said, in reference to a statement last month by Trump that he may look at reintroducing tariffs on Canadian aluminum.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum in 2018 led to a nearly yearlong trade spat, with Canada levying retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods until a deal to lift them was reached in May, 2019.
The NAFTA file has been in Chrystia Freeland's hands since Trump first demanded the trade pact be reopened. As foreign affairs minister, Freeland spent months shuttling back and forth between Ottawa and Washington in 2018 and 2019, and continued to oversee the deal even after being named deputy prime minister after the election last October.
A June 29 Order in Council passed that responsibility to International Trade Minister Mary Ng, as outlined in the legislation to implement the deal.
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