ECONOMY/NAFTA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “A government report has concluded that the Trump administration’s revised North American trade agreement would offer modest benefits to the economy, challenging the president’s claims that the accord would make far-reaching changes. Mr. Trump has reviled the quarter-century-old North American Free Trade Agreement as the worst trade pact in existence and blamed it for pushing up the trade deficit, or the gap between what the country imports and what it exports. Over the past year and a half, he gave his administration a mandate to improve the pact. In November, Canada, Mexico and the United States signed an updated accord, which the president rebranded as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and the new deal is awaiting ratification from legislators in all three countries. On Thursday [4-18-19], the United States International Trade Commission, a government body, released an independent analysis of the accord’s potential effects on the country’s economy, a report required by law before Congress votes on the deal.”
–Ana Swanson, “Trump’s Nafta Revisions Offer Modest Economic Benefits, Report Finds,” The New York Times online, April 18, 2019