CANADA/MEXICO/NAFTA/TRADE DEALS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump has long wielded the word ‘Nafta’ like an epithet, deriding the North American Free Trade Agreement as the worst trade deal in history. So when he renamed it the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement — or U.S.M.C.A. — this week, he may have short-circuited attempts to criticize the new deal. Why? Because the name itself is really hard to say. Even Mr. Trump, who bills himself as a master brander, appeared to grasp that U.S.M.C.A. was not as smooth as Nafta, saying on Monday [10-1-18] that people would make use of the new term ’99 percent’ of the time. At an event in Philadelphia on Tuesday [10-2-18] he poked fun at the name, arguing that it had to be changed because Nafta was so bad for the country.”
–Alan Rappeport, “What’s in a Name Change? For Those Saying U.S.M.C.A., a Mouthful,” The New York Times online, October 2, 2018