Chaos-agent Trump tries to screw the North American economies in the name of rebranding NAFTA with the Marine Corps acronym.
The Wall Street Journal reports that during a donors meeting prior to a fundraiser at his DC hotel, Trump floated the new brand identity for his renegotiated NAFTA.
Seeking a distraction from his other chaos, Trump, like the southern border wall and national anthem protests, tries to display his skill as the master of message management.
The reality is that months of actual legislative action is needed to even end NAFTA and the indeterminate nature of the current changes proposed to Mexico.
Trump may be doubling down because of reports that drafts of other trade agreement withdrawal threats were taken off his desk apparently without his knowledge.
Another reason could be that he failed to get the 2017 GOP tax cut bill officially titled as Cut! Cut! Cut! as per Woodward’s book Fear.
President Trump told donors that he hopes to rebrand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among the U.S., Mexico and Canada as the "USMC" pact, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
If the U.S. is unable to come to terms on a deal with Canada, Trump said he's willing to drop the "C" from the new name to make it simply USM.
"USMC" is also a common abbreviation for the United States Marine Corps.
The Journal reported that Trump floated the new name and hit Canada over tariffs during a private meeting with roughly a dozen supporters on Wednesday night, which was followed by a pricey fundraiser dinner at Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C.
thehill.com/...
Bob Woodward was recently interviewed by CBC on this:
CBC’s ANNA MARIA TREMONTI (AMT): Are you seeing his strategy of fear on display and how he is negotiating free trade with Canada?
BOB WOODWARD: That's one of the elements you look at the whole effort by Trump which I relayed in the book to get out of that free trade agreement with Canada in Mexico. He is obsessed with situations where we have the trade imbalance is such that it's negative and as you know with Canada it's positive. Other words, we export more goods and then we get from Canada. But he still thinks that this is unfair.
AMT: NAFTA has become such a huge issue in Canada. How close did President Trump come to signing the letter that would have given notice to Congress that he was withdrawing from the agreement?
BOB WOODWARD: Well it was on his desk and Gary Cohen the chief economic adviser in the White House took it off his desk, [unintelligible]. So and Trump didn't remember and would go back to some of these issues frequently. But in this case it stayed inactive for a while and then of course it became active earlier this year.
AMT: I mean that's incredible the story you relate. That they that his own staff actually drafted the letter and then another member of the staff said 'Don't worry I'll take it off his desk'.
BOB WOODWARD: Exactly. I've done books and articles for The Washington Post on eight presidents, from Nixon Obama. This is the ninth and I've never seen this kind of active effort and to be able to report it authoritatively while the president is still in office.
AMT: His threat to withdraw immediately from NAFTA with that letter is not an isolated case of documents being snatched from his desk by the very people who are supposed to carry out the order. You describe a scene where the same man, Gary Cohen, the chief economic adviser steals a similar directive on South Korean trade. What happenedÉ
BOB WOODWARD: Precisely that. Cohen was so worried about the possibility of withdrawing from the free trade agreement with South Korea that he took the document. But there was more of a story to that because there is a connection between the trade issues, the security issues and the very secret intelligence operations that are conducted. In fact allowed the United States to detect a North Korean missile launch within seven seconds which was a tremendous advantage and Cohen felt this was jeopardizing the whole relationship with South Korea. Actually called in the secretary of defense Mattis to plead with the president don't get out of this trade agreement. And that was successful for a while.
AMT: When we talk about trade and his reaction to trade deficits, what kind of understanding does President Trump have when it comes to trade?
BOB WOODWARD: Well he thinks that if there's a trade deficit it is money that is being lost. 99.9 Percent of the economists know that that's not the case. In fact if there's a trade deficit it can be a good thing for consumers in the United States because they're getting goods that much less expensive that they have extra money to spend on other products. And also to save money they tried to educate the president on this and he just absolutely is convinced that somehow if people buy say high speed electronic equipment from abroad from Asia or Europe or Canada, that somehow that money is gone. And they had some real which and I describe this some real bouts in try and educate the president on this. He just does not accept it, says he has views that go back 30 years and he's not going to change his mind.
AMT: He calls them effing globalists.
BOB WOODWARD: Yes.
AMT: And again in the context of a trade war and how he looks at trade and fear, what do you make of his lashing out at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau?
BOB WOODWARD: Well this is a theme in the book on all kinds of foreign policy and economic trade, immigration issues and that is there is a tendency to blame others, to use pretty rough language and to somehow think that he can win these kinds of things rather than- The bond between the United States and Canada. It's astonishing. It's important to the security of both countries. It's psychologically very important and it goes way back as you know. And to try to leverage that for some idea that actually makes no sense. When I learned about this I was surprised and then to hear how it became public this year. I was even more deeply surprised.