After Nafta

The challenges of international negotiations with a reality-TV star

- Lauren McKeon

IN SEPTEMBER, just a few weeks before the revised North American Free Trade Agreement was signed, Chrystia Freeland walked onto a Toronto stage to a standing ovation. The Canadian foreign affairs minister was the star of a panel criticizing populist politics and “authoritarian strong men.” This event, dubbed Taking on the Tyrant, cast Freeland as the feminist hero fighting a crass, pussy-grabbing villain. It also helped send a clear political message — one Ottawa wanted to broadcast over its months-long, contentious talks with the United States to replace the original twenty-four-year-old NAFTA: by standing up to a bully, Freeland was protecting the values of our liberal, multicultural democracy and, indeed, our very Canadianness.

The NAFTA talks weren’t a renegotiation of a trading partnership as much as a show of power — a reminder, on the world stage, of which country has the most of it. Trump had made reforming NAFTA an issue on his 2016 presidential campaign, a dramatic show of his ultrabusinessman brand, and a key pillar of his closed- borders, America-first, MAGA view of the world. His reality-TV style of politics, however, pushed negotiations with Canada and Mexico beyond the financial arguments that undergird the normal give and take of competing interests and into outright fake news. There was little acknowledgment by Trump, for example, that withdrawing from NAFTA would put the US economy in serious jeopardy. Or that, as of 2016, US trade was responsible for 41 million jobs, accounting for 22 percent of the country’s employment.