AUTO INDUSTRY/CANADA/MEXICO/NAFTA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Four days before the deadline, it appeared increasingly unlikely that the United States and Canada would rally to save the three-party NAFTA framework. Intensive negotiations had yielded important progress, but the two sides remained far apart on the most contentious issues…It was a gloomy outlook for talks that had persisted for months but had become hung up on matters Trump found himself obsessing over: Canada’s restrictive dairy market and the import of auto parts into the United States. The President had taken to railing on those topics during his rollicking campaign rallies. Personal animus had emerged as well. Trump, a conservative populist, found himself butting heads with Justin Trudeau, the liberal prime minister who’s opposed him on matters like climate change and refugees, not to mention trade. Trump denounced Trudeau as ‘very dishonest and weak’ after making an early departure from the G7 meeting Trudeau was hosting in June…For Trump, a revamped NAFTA reflected an opportunity to fulfill a chief campaign promise, even if the final result was viewed by some economists as more of a rebranding than an entirely new deal. And while Trump took a victory lap on Monday [10-1-18], touting the success of his tariff brinkmanship, he also admitted the future of the new US-Mexico-Canada Agreement was uncertain.”
–Jeremy Diamond and Kevin Liptak, “How Trump landed his biggest trade win yet,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, October 1, 2018 11:50 pm