Andrew Coyne provides a useful set of clues to help ordinary folks understand the NAFTA “negotiations”:
Talks on a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement, which at various times in the past days, weeks and months have been said to be on the verge of either a deal or collapse, are now reported to be “progressing slowly.” An agreement was not expected by the end of the day Friday. Some reports said it was not expected till the end of the month. Or maybe December.
In other words, business as usual. Had you read none of the several thousand reports on the negotiations since they began more than a year ago you would be scarcely less informed than the most avid trade watcher. Some points to bear in mind as the talks grind toward their next “deadline”:
No one knows anything. Any number of authoritative commentators have weighed in on the failure of the talks, if they are in fact failing, and who is to blame if they are. But the truth is that unless you were in the room with the negotiators you have no idea what is really going on — assuming even they do. This is not because there have been no leaks or official accounts of the proceedings, but because…
Everyone is lying to you. Many a rookie reporter has had the same experience covering a labour negotiation. The talks are said to be coming “down to the wire,” facing a dramatic “midnight deadline.” Sources close to one side or the other confide there will be “no more concessions,” that a “strike is now unavoidable.”
So the deadline comes and goes and nothing happens: they keep talking. Or else the side that had vowed not to give an inch more caves and cuts a deal. Which is to say that while all sides dutifully proclaim their aversion to “negotiating through the media,” everyone negotiates through the media, all the time. The NAFTA talks are no different.
The NAFTA talks are completely different. There has never been a trade negotiation like this, because there has never been a president, or leader of any major country, like Donald Trump. It isn’t just that he lies all the time, or changes his mind on those occasions when he is not lying.
