Canada - Mexico - USA: Trump hails ‘historic’ trade deal with Canada and Mexico - by David Lynch

President Trump on Monday hailed the major revisions he was able to extract from Canada and Mexico to the 25-year-old North American trade agreement, as business executives, labor leaders, and lawmakers began poring over details.

“Throughout the campaign I promised to renegotiate NAFTA and today we have kept that promise,” Trump said at a Rose Garden news conference.

Calling the deal “truly historic,” Trump pledged: “It will transform North America back into a manufacturing powerhouse.”

The White House, as well as leaders from Canada and Mexico, announced they had inked the deal late Sunday after Canada’s 11th hour agreement. But congressional approval is uncertain, particularly if Democrats retake control of the House in the November midterm elections.

Note EU-Digest: the BS continues, as not much is changed re: old NAFTA deal.

Read more: Trump hails ‘historic’ trade deal with Canada and Mexico

Canada: NAFTA MEETING RESCHEDULED TO NEXT WEEK REGARDLESS OF TRUMP'S ULTIMATING

Read the complete report at:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nafta-trump-compromise-trudeau-1.4806240

THE MEXICO US TRADE DEAL: More accurate details about the Trade Deal from Canadian Resources

5 new rules the U.S.-Mexico trade deal would set

Read more detailsshared via the CBC News Android App at: 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/trade-deal-overview-1.4800716

Mexico - US trade deal: Another Trump BS

Trump announces US-Mexico trade deal, setting stage for Nafta overhaul

Read more: 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/27/trump-nafta-us-mexico-trade-understanding-latest?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

Estonia - US Relations: U.S. Ambassador to Estonia resigns over Trump anti-Europe rants

Ambassador James D. Melville announced in a message to friends on social media late on Friday evening that he has decided to resign. Recent statements by U.S. President Donald Trump that the EU was "set up to take advantage of the United States" and that "NATO is as bad as NAFTA" are not only factually wrong, but prove that it is time for him to go, Melville wrote.

Read more: U.S. Ambassador to Estonia resigns over Trump anti-Europe rants | News | ERR

USA: The NAFTA talks take on a new urgency - by Don Lee

The Trump administration appears to be closing in on a deal on a revamped North American Free Trade Agreement, but is up against a very tight political deadline to meet its goal of forcing a congressional vote on a new pact by the end of the year.

After months of making little progress, high-level trade officials from the U.S., Canada and Mexico indicate that negotiations have been gaining momentum, and analysts monitoring the talks the last several days said Friday that there was a fair chance of reaching an agreement in principle in weeks or even days.

The president’s chief trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, plans to continue discussions with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts in Washington on May 7. They need to close gaps on sensitive matters including trade in autos and farm goods and rules for handling investment disputes.

Canada and Mexico, rather than make politically unpopular concessions, may decide it better to prolong the talks, even at the risk of a U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA, as President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened.

Moreover, Mr. Trump’s practice of lumping different issues together for bargaining leverage has increased uncertainties about the fate of negotiations.

Last month, Mr. Trump gave an exemption to Canada and Mexico on hefty steel and aluminum tariffs, but only until May 1, saying what happens afterward would depend on how rewriting NAFTA comes along.

On Monday, Mr. Trump suggested that a NAFTA overhaul should include another one of his goals, tighter control of people entering from the southern border.

“Mexico, whose laws on immigration are very tough, must stop people from going through Mexico and into the U.S.,” the president said on Twitter. “We may make this a condition of the new NAFTA agreement.”

Read more: The NAFTA talks take on a new urgency | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Canada: Blame Canada: Trump paints us as suave international swindlers - Adrian Morrow

To hear Donald Trump tell it, Canada is a suave international swindler, repeatedly conning American leaders and waltzing away with his country's money.

The U.S.'s neighbour to the north is "very smooth," has "outsmarted our politicians for many years," and has been "very rough" as it has "taken advantage" of the hapless superpower.

For months, the U.S. President has painted this portrait of Canada as Machiavellian manipulator in his public comments. Earlier this week, he took it to a new level.

During a meeting with state governors to discuss school safety, Mr. Trump went on a lengthy digression about trade policy, rounding on his country's partners in the North American free-trade agreement, which is being renegotiated this week in Mexico City. Mr. Trump accused the slick Canadians of trying to trick him into believing the deal is working well.

"We cannot continue to lose that kind of money with one country. We lose a lot with Canada. People don't know it," he said. "Canada's very smooth: They have you believe that it's wonderful, and it is – wonderful for them. Not wonderful for us."

This doesn't exactly jibe with the Great White North's usual image – the guileless neighbourhood nice guy, maybe a little quietly insecure next to his hyper-confident next-door neighbour.

"'Canada is very smooth.' – Donald Trump," tweeted CNN pundit Chris Cillizza. "No one has ever said this about Canada before. Not ever. Never."

In the Reputation Institute's 2017 list of the best-regarded countries, an annual survey of 39,000 people in the world's 55 largest economies, Canada scored high on perceptions of public safety, ethics, effective government and favourable business climate. The country topped the list, just ahead of Switzerland and Sweden. (The U.S. was 38th, between Mexico and Venezuela.)

"It's both an unusual and exaggerated take," Stephen Hahn-Griffiths, Reputation Institute's executive partner and chief research officer, said of Mr. Trump's apparent image of Canada. "Outside of, maybe, some stand-up comics, there's no one with any substance who would characterize Canada in such a disparaging light."

Christopher Sands, director of the Center for Canadian Studies at Johns Hopkins University, said Mr. Trump's comments serve a political purpose: The Trudeau government has been lobbying free-trade-friendly governors and members of Congress, and encouraging them to pressure the White House to drop its protectionist demands in NAFTA talks. What Mr. Trump is trying to do, Mr. Sands argued, is drive a wedge between those American politicians and their new Canadian best friends.

Read more: Blame Canada: Trump paints us as suave international swindlers - The Globe and Mail

Mexico-US Relations Souring - after testy call with Trump over border wall, Mexican president shelves plan to visit White House - by Philip Rucker, Josh Partlow, Nick Miroff

Tentative plans for Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to make his first visit to the White House to meet with President Trump were scuttled this week after a testy call between the two leaders ended in an impasse over Trump’s promised border wall, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.

Peña Nieto was eyeing an official trip to Washington this month or in March, but both countries agreed to call off the plan after Trump would not agree to publicly affirm Mexico’s position that it would not fund construction of a border wall that the Mexican people widely consider offensive, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential conversation.

Speaking by phone on Tuesday, Peña Nieto and Trump devoted a considerable portion of their roughly 50 minute conversation to the wall, and neither man would compromise his position.

One Mexican official said Trump “lost his temper.” But U.S. officials described him instead as being frustrated and exasperated, saying Trump believed it was unreasonable for Peña Nieto to expect him to back off his crowd-pleasing campaign promise of forcing Mexico to pay for the wall.

Both accounts confirm it was Peña Nieto’s desire to avoid public embarrassment — and Trump’s unwillingness to provide that assurance — that proved to be the dealbreaker.

A physically slight man, Peña Nieto has been loath to put himself in an environment in which the more imposing Trump could play the bully. Peña Nieto’s style is exceedingly formal, and he is averse to verbal combat, making his carefully scripted public events the opposite of Trump’s often freewheeling appearances.

With Mexico heading into a July presidential election, any action by Peña Nieto that could be seen as kowtowing to Trump or buckling under U.S. pressure risks damaging the prospects for his Institutional Revolutionary Party.

The two presidents’ public posturing over the wall — Trump demands that Mexico pay for it; Peña Nieto insists that it will not — has harmed their personal relationship and jeopardized the alliance between their neighboring countries.

“The problem is that President Trump has painted himself, President Peña Nieto and the bilateral relationship into a corner,” said Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States. “Even from the get-go, the idea of Mexico paying for the wall was never going to fly. His relationship with Mexico isn’t strategically driven. It’s not even business; it’s personal, driven by motivations and triggers, and that’s a huge problem. It could end up with the U.S. asking itself, ‘Who lost Mexico?’ ”
 

Read more: After testy call with Trump over border wall, Mexican president shelves plan to visit USA

NAFTA: Trump’s zero-sum game has likely doomed NAFTA - by Lawrence Herman

Round 4 of the NAFTA negotiations ended in exceptional bitterness on Tuesday, with the United States presenting a series of deeply disturbing and unacceptable proposals. While the negotiating deadline was extended into early 2018, the talks are heading downhill and will likely hit the wall before then.

ti's interesting that commentators are now talking about the need for a Plan B (or C or D) for Canada, when it should have been clear that these talks were on a perilous slope from the outset.

While policy wonks were once full of naive optimism about modernizing the North American free-trade agreement, a cold shower of realism would have doused that rosy glow. The problem is these negotiations were never born of common objectives among like-minded governments. We're in these talks because of a diktat from one source – U.S. President Donald Trump.

After repeatedly condemning NAFTA as a "disaster" and the "worst trade agreement ever," Mr. Trump wasn't going to go gentle into that good night. He was obviously going to follow through with aggressively one-sided demands to Canada and Mexico – and that's what they are – or else.

U.S. presidents set the tone for their administrations in inaugural addresses to the country and the world at large. Remember Franklin Roosevelt and "We've nothing to fear but fear itself," or John F. Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you …"

In the case of Mr. Trump, it was a bombastic and inward-looking declaration that it would be "America first and only America first" during his term of office.

The U.S. approach to these negotiations is unprecedented, the opposite of countries sitting at the table to reach a balanced and mutually agreeable outcome. Mr. Trump will have none of that; to the contrary, it's all about a zero-sum, take-no-hostages game used by him in putting together real estate deals.

Faced with this reality, comments about the need for alternative plans for Canada are part of a deeper concern over an uncertain trade and political relationship with the United States.

Read more: Trump’s zero-sum game has likely doomed NAFTA - The Globe and Mail

NAFTA negotiators encounter early sticking points on visas, supply management and other issues

Negotiators have run into a series of early sticking points on nearly every major element considered key to achieving a new NAFTA agreement, The Canadian Press has learned.

A recurring pattern involves one country raising a prized priority only to have other parties systematically refuse to engage the conversation, said one source with knowledge of how the talks are unfolding in Mexico City.

"The tone is negative," said the source, who made sure to add that it's still early, he remains hopeful a deal can be reached this year, and that obstinacy is to be expected in initial bargaining.

He cited two examples.

One is the Canadians asking for greater access to professional visas. It's a priority not just for the Canadians, but also for businesses that struggle to send staff across the border. NAFTA's visa list is outdated and doesn't include modern digital jobs. The Americans have pushed off that conversation, which risks bumping into that country's sensitive immigration politics.

Canada has returned the favour. The second example cited by the source involves Canada's supply-management system. The U.S. has started to raise it as an issue. While the U.S. has not yet tabled a formal request, with numbers, it has declared its interest in loosening Canada's import controls on dairy and poultry.

Read more: NAFTA negotiators encounter early sticking points on visas, supply management and other issues - Business - CBC News

USA: Donald Trump press conference with Finish President Niinisto a total disaster

Donald Trump managed to mix up two female reporters at a press conference on Monday, forcing the Finnish president Sauli Niinisto to explain that the women were not actually the same person.

“Again?” Mr Trump asked the Finnish president, mistakenly believing he had called on a reporter who had already asked a question. “You’re going to give her the same one?”

“No, she is not the same lady,” Mr Niinisto replied, to the amusement of the two journalists.

“We have a lot of blonde women in Finland,” one of the reporters added, as Mr Trump laughed.

That was only the beginning of what was described by some attending the Press gathering as total "confused babbling" by President Trump.

President Donald Trump during the Press meeting also continued to insist that Mexico will pay for his proposed wall on the southern border, even though the country’s government released a statement over the weekend saying it would never do so.

“One way or the other Mexico is going to pay for the wall, that’s right,” Trump said at a this joint news conference alongside Finnish President Sauli Niinistö in the White House. “It may be through reimbursement, but one way or the other Mexico will pay for the wall”, he said.

He also noted that the NAFTA agreement was completely unfair to America and would be renegotiated by America or ended.
Trump has threatened to shut down the government if Congress does not fund his border wall proposal, which virtually all Democrats and many Republicans oppose.

President Donald Trump also told reporters at the Press Conference  that he chose to announce his pardon of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio just as Hurricane Harvey was hitting landfall because “I assumed the ratings would be far higher than they would be normally.”

Arpaio was convicted last month of criminal contempt of court for refusing to obey an official order barring his practices of detaining undocumented immigrants.

Trump said that Arpaio was treated “unbelievable unfairly” by the Obama administration. The Justice Department’s civil rights division issued a scathing investigative report in 2011 on Arpaio’s policing practices and that of his department.

After the meeting several journalists questioned the President's intellectual capability to handle a press conference. One journalist remarked. " this guy is completely "cookoo" .

EU-Digest

US-Canadian Relations: Justin Trudeau (David) and Donald Trump (Goliath) to meet Monday in Washington

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he will discuss Canadian values and jobs with U.S. President Donald Trump when the pair meets in person for the first time on Monday in Washington.

During a visit to Iqaluit Thursday, Trudeau was asked whether he would raise the controversial U.S. travel ban with Trump, which affects people from seven majority-Muslim countries, as well as all refugees.

"As everyone in Canada knows, I have two important responsibilities that stand out in the way we engage our neighbours to the south. The first is, of course, to highlight Canadian values and principles and the things that keep our country strong," he said.

Note EU-Digest: This will hopefully be a replay of the Biblical David and Goliath  story.

For complete report click here:  full report: Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump to meet Monday in Washington - Politics - CBC News

EU-US Trade Negotiations: TTIP Rhetoric and Reality: Europe's Regulations at Risk - by Frank Ackerman

TTIP:downward harmonization 
outweighing optimistic estimates

During the final week of April 2016, New York City was playing host to U.S. and European trade negotiators for the 13th round of talks on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Protocols agreement (TTIP).

That it is still even under discussion reflects not only the vast political influence of multinational corporations, but also a certain automatic orthodoxy among many economists. The latter assert that trade liberalization can create huge worldwide economic benefits.

If those benefits sound important, I hope you enjoyed them – because they have already happened. In the “bad” old days – think 1990 or earlier – there were real barriers to international trade. Tariffs, import quotas and many varieties of protectionist legislation did appear to limit the flow of goods between nations.

But then, NAFTA and CAFTA (the Central American Free Trade Agreement equivalent) opened up Western Hemisphere trade. Next, China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), and WTO rules lowered worldwide trade barriers.

Also, a longstanding textile quota agreement was allowed to expire as well.

Meanwhile, the European Union continued to expand its single market across more and more of Europe. Bilateral and regional trade agreements, too numerous to mention, continued to pop up on every continent.

Analyses sow there are enormous benefits from multiple areas of European regulation. In chemicals policy, the EU requires manufacturers and importers of chemicals to provide well-defined evidence on the safety of their products.

In the U.S., unfamiliar chemicals are treated as innocent until proven guilty, with almost no requirements for safety testing.

In climate change and renewable energy, Europe is far ahead of the United States. Thanks to feed-in tariffs and other policies that promote renewables, more than 25% of EU electricity now comes from renewable energy.

This has climate benefits, because it avoids CO2 emissions from conventional generation (usually coal-fired, in Europe).

It has health benefits, because it avoids the other pollutants caused by coal combustion.

And there are more than 1.2 million jobs in renewable energy industries throughout the EU.

The benefits of just these two areas of European regulation, chemicals policy and renewable energy, are almost as valuable as the entire economic benefit of TTIP to Europe (as estimated by TTIP advocates).

So suppose that Europe accepted TTIP and gained as much income as the trade optimists predict. If this came at the price of downward harmonization to U.S. standards,

Europe would lose about as much in the benefits of chemical safety and renewable energy as it gained in higher incomes. 

Since many other valuable areas of regulation would also be at risk, the overall losses from downward harmonization would greatly outweigh the optimistic estimates of the gains from slightly expanded trade.

The rhetoric of trade liberalization lives on. Only the reality has changed. As Janis Joplin might have put it, is free trade just another word for nothing left to lose?

We need another word for orderly, democratically governed trade between sovereign nations that are free to protect their citizens from social and environmental harm.

TTIP and similar proposed treaties have nothing in common with the international agreements we need to promote the common good.

Read more: TTIP Rhetoric and Reality: Europe's Regulations at Risk - The Globalist

International Trade: De Blasio Rips Trans Pacific Partnership, Calls NAFTA a ‘Disaster’

Free Trade : Not Always Benefiting Everyone

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New Yorktoday joined a slew of city politicians to decry President Barack Obama’s proposed Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal—comparing it to North American Free Trade Agreement, which he deemed a “disaster.”

“There’s such passion on this issue because we’ve already been to this movie,” Mr. de Blasio said at an anti-TPP rally in front of City Hall this morning. “We saw it with NAFTA. We saw what a disaster NAFTA was, and we’re not going to repeat that mistake in our time.”

Mr. de Blasio’s opposition to the TPP is not surprising: almost all of the city’s Congressional delegation is opposed to the deal, which is hated by unions. The pact would ease trade barriers and a host of regulations between the United States, Australia and several Asian and Latin American nations.

But the mayor’s comments come at a time when free trade has become a major issue in the presidential race, and not one that has been particularly good for Mr. de Blasio’s chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton. As President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, Ms. Clinton was instrumental in creating the free trade accord, though she has since disavowed it.

Her opponent for the Democratic nomination, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has emphasized his long-time opposition to free trade deals like the TPP, and to NAFTA—which was passed by President Bill Clinton. And while Mr. de Blasio and Republican front-runner Donald Trump have little in common, they’ve now shared language on NAFTA: Mr. Trump, too, has called that free trade deal a “disaster.”

Mr. de Blasio framed his opposition to the president’s trade deal in familiar terms—as part of his crusade against income inequality.

“It’s a fight we have to win because this goes to the heart of the matter—if we’re going to fight income inequality in this country, we have to fight TPP because it will take us backwards, it will take us in the wrong direction,” Mr. de Blasio said. “And there is such a powerful coalition that has come forward to make sure that our trade deals actually don’t hurt our own people. That’s what this comes down to.”

He said the country could not “sacrifice the American middle class to the all mighty dollar.”

“And NAFTA was that. NAFTA took away almost a million jobs in this country—tens of thousands of them here in New York State. We saw places all over this country—towns and cities devastated. We saw people who had solid middle class lives have the rug pulled out from under them,” Mr. de Blasio said. “People who had done everything right, who had played by the rules, who had worked hard, suddenly were left with nothing—that’s what NAFTA did, and we have every reason to believe that TPP will do the same. And that’s why we have to stand up and fight against it.”

The president, with the help of the GOP House majority, obtained “fast track authority” last summer— meaning he has the power to negotiate the act himself, and Congress will get only an up and down vote on the deal.

Read more: De Blasio Rips Trans Pacific Partnership, Calls NAFTA a ‘Disaster’ | | Observer

EU-US trade pact to miss 2015 deadline - "Europe should not sell its soul to the devil" - by Benjamin Fox

A 2015 deadline to agree a landmark trade deal with the United States is likely to be missed, EU trade officials have conceded.

"We cannot exclude that it may take longer," Latvian foreign minister Edgars Rinkevics, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, told reporters following a meeting of EU trade ministers on Wednesday (25 March).

“We have to do our best to get an agreement but we don’t want to reach an agreement just for the sake of it,” he added. “The political will is there but there is an acceptance that it may take longer”.

“We are aiming to conclude this under the Obama administration … but I cannot give you a date,” said EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, who added that ratification of TTIP could get caught up in the next US presidential election cycle.

The race to replace Barack Obama will begin in earnest in autumn, when the Democratic and Republican parties begin their nomination process ahead of the presidential election in November 2016.

Trade negotiators have now concluded eight rounds of talks with a view to agreeing a transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP), but were given a provisional deadline of December 2015 by EU leaders to agree a draft text.

The most thorny issue for ministers remains the investor protection mechanism known as ISDS, which allows firms to take governments to court if they discriminate against them or introduce new laws which threaten their investments.

“ISDS is a hot potato,” conceded Rinkevics. He said there are “differences in opinion” amongst ministers, but added there is no indication that member states want to open up the EU-Canada trade agreement, which includes the controversial regime.

Note EU-Digest: A European Parliamentarian when asked about the TTIP and the ISDS controversy said. "The EU must not sell  its soul to the devil by agreeing to the non-transparent TTIP - regardless of the 'fantastic' stories we hear about the economic benefits of the TTIP, we only need to look at the results achieved following the NAFTA agreement between Canada, Mexico,  and the US."

 "That  agreement, which has now been in effect 20 years, still shows little improvement in the overall economic conditions of ordinary citizens in the participating countries." 

"NAFTA has, however, certainly been a bonanza for the free-wheeling, uncontrolled, multi-national corporations - we must not repeat that in these negotiations with the US."

Read more: EU-US trade pact to miss 2015 deadline

EU Trade Negotiators Please Take Note - "US Senator Sanders Contrasts U.S. Trade Secrecy to EU Transparency" - by RM

EU negotiators at the EU - US Trade Negotiations better take note of how US Independent Senator. Bernie Sanders of Virginia  recently challenged the trade representative of the United States to follow the example of the European Union and stop hiding details of a proposed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

“It is time for American trade negotiators to stop operating in the shadows and come clean with details of an agreement that would almost certainly throw more American workers out of jobs and shift more manufacturing to low-wage countries overseas,” Sanders said

In Brussels recently, the European Commission published documents setting out EU proposals for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership that it is negotiating with the United States. The commission also posted an online guide to the document.

Sanders cited the Europeans’ openness in renewing his call for U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman to at least turn over to the senator the full text of a proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that has been negotiated in secret with input from corporations which stand to profit on the deal.

Earlier, senator Sanders wrote a letter to Froman asking for the document that Congress could soon be asked to approve.

“It is incomprehensible to me that the leaders of major corporate interests who stand to gain enormous financial benefits from this agreement are actively involved in the writing of the TPP while, at the same time, the elected officials of this country, representing the American people, have little or no knowledge as to what is in it,” Sanders said in his  letter.  “In my view, this is simply unacceptable.”

On New Year's Day, 2014, Canada, Mexico and the US celebrated the 20th anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Agreement created a common market for goods, services and investment capital with Canada and Mexico. And it opened the door through which American workers were shoved, unprepared, into a brutal global competition for jobs that has cut their living standards and is destroying their future.

NAFTA's birth was bi-partisan -- conceived by Ronald Reagan, negotiated by George Bush I, and pushed through the US Congress by Bill Clinton in alliance with Congressional Republicans and corporate lobbyists.
Clinton and his collaborators promised that the deal would bring "good-paying American jobs," a rising trade surplus with Mexico, and a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration. Instead, NAFTA directly cost the U.S. a net loss of 700,000 jobs. The surplus with Mexico turned into a chronic deficit. And the economic dislocation in Mexico increased the the flow of undocumented workers into the U.S.

As to the cost of living, they have only been going up.

Nevertheless, Clinton and his Republican successor, George Bush II, then used the NAFTA template to design the World Trade Organization, more than a dozen bilateral trade treaties, and the deal that opened the American market to China -- which alone has cost the U.S. another net 2.7 million jobs. The result has been 20 years of relentless outsourcing of jobs and technology.

By any measure, NAFTA and its sequels has been a major contributor to the rising inequality of incomes and wealth and yet there are two more such trade deals being negotiated: the Trans-Pacific Partnership with eleven Pacific Rim countries and a free trade agreement with the EU.

Consequently, Europeans better be aware : even though the EU Commission  has released it's online guide as to the present ongoing negotiations at the Trade and Investment Partnership meettings, which is a step in the right direction, EU Negotiators must also be aware that they are not only negotiating with US government officials, but also, indirectly, with ruthless American multi-national corporations.

Unfortunately these corporations, which are mainly motivated in making profits, and avoiding paying taxes whenever possible, basically can't care less about increasing employment opportunities for Europeans or Americans as history has shown us with NAFTA.

Axs it stands today, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Project is a one way street to more corporate involvement and control in government and the daily lives of citizens in Europe and the US.


EU-Digest 

Mexico - NAFTA: The "Three Caballeros" meet In Mexico: "Poor Results, No Deals and Many Promisses"

NAFTA Showtime: Stephen Harper, Enrique Peña Nieto, and Barrack Obama

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation noted: "Jean Chretien famously pronounced his last G8 summit as prime minister a success. When asked why, he replied, "Because it could have been a disaster.'
'
That same logic could be applied to this past weeks meeting of the three North American leaders in Toluca, Mexico.

Even though the" three Caballeros" called NAFTA a great success - looking at the results - tells another story. .

The Financial Times wrote about NAFTA: "Treally wenty years into Nafta, Mexico has too many criminals and not enough policemen; too many workers earning low wages and not enough skilled jobs; too many false dawns and not enough economic growth.

NAFTA really is a big economic failure. From 1994 through 2003, the Mexican economy has grown by only 11 percent per person. This is less than one-fourth the rate of growth that Mexico experienced in the 1960s and 1970s. This is the relevant economic comparison for anyone who wants to evaluate Mexico's experience with NAFTA.

Of course, the reforms embodied in NAFTA did not begin in 1994 - they started in the early 1980s. But if we take the longer view, it looks even worse: From 1980 to the present, income per person in Mexico has grown by about 19 percent. This compares to 93 percent for the 1960-1979 (somewhat shorter) period. In other words, there is no economic evidence that the NAFTA model is a success at least not for the tax paying public.

U.S. economic winners and losers under NAFTA vary with company size, type of industry or sector, and geographical location. Sectors affected positively include planes, trains and automobiles, large agri-businesses, appliance makers and energy corporations. Clearly, large multi-national companies with investment capacities, world-market savvy and capital resources have benefited from protected investment and cheap labor. These companies enhanced management performance-based compensation while putting downward pressure on production-worker wages and benefits, collective bargaining clout and available jobs, especially in manufacturing. Many view their actions as a major contributor to compensation inequality.

According to one estimate, workers in Canada and Mexico have displaced 829,280 U.S. jobs, mostly high-wage positions in manufacturing. The heaviest U.S. manufacturing-job losses were in states such as Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Connecticut, New Jersey, California, Indiana and Florida. 

Canada has so far experienced significant benefit from:

• U.S. investment in automotive production,
• Increases in oil exports to the U.S. and the rest of the world,
• Increases in shipment of beef, agricultural, wood and paper products to the U.S.
• Export of mineral and mining products, which have fared well in U.S. markets.

Canada has, however, also experienced some losses in narrow sectors such as specialty steel production and processed foods due to U.S. imports.

Overall the conclusion is that NAFTA has not lived up to the high expectations of its proponents. It has made many U.S. companies and investors rich - and their managements even richer. But it has also cost many U.S. manufacturing workers their livelihoods while failing to raise living standards for most Mexicans. Any major market changes not dictated by market forces usually lead to both opportunity and loss, and this has happened with NAFTA. 

EU-Digest

World Inc.- Doomsday Scenario: "the alignment of NAFTA - Transpacific Partnership And EU-US Transatlantic Trade Agreement"

World Inc.,

A new era could be dawning for the world as capitalism undergoes a major re-alignment

The result will be a joyous celebration, not only on Wall Street, but also among the multi-national empires around the worldt.

Profit may finally be crowned King as all Nation states around the Globe unite into one World, Inc

"Yes, a coronation worthy of Louis XIV of France (1638-1715) “the Sun King,” who successfully increased the influence of the crown by establishing authority over the church and the aristocracy, thereby consolidating absolute monarchy in France", says the UK Progressive.

"The upcoming coronation (maybe) of King Profit, therefore, shall be the pinnacle of capitalism for there is no higher level for it to achieve beyond “absolutism.”

The date for the coronation has not yet been set, but it could be real soon, especially if the US Congress grants President Obama “fast-track” authority to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an agreement amongst 12 major Pacific nations for free trade, which is seen as very positive for multi-national businesses."

If you don't know what TPP is see it as similar to NAFTA, but on steroids,.

NAFTA might be seen as a success in terms of corporate profit but once NAFTA officially crossed the border into Mexico in 1994, all hell broke loose for the middle class folks. Mexico’s annual per capita growth became a flat-line, the lowest in the hemisphere, real wages are down, unemployment is up.

Heavily subsidized U.S. crops made Mexican crop prices drop, driving small Mexican farmers off the farm and resulting in mass unemployment.

Today some 20 million Mexicans live with food poverty, while hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have headed for the U.S. border to find “a better life”  resulting in major US immigration problems  

On the other hand, even though NAFTA has not benefitted average taxpayers in any way or form, NAFTA  has proven to be very beneficial for multi-national corporations.

They can now set up shop at will just across the US border, without any nagging and complex US environmental  and health regulations to adhere to while benefiting from dirt-cheap local wages. As Ross Perot once said when he ran for the US presidency in 1994, "you can hear the sucking sound of US jobs going to Mexico".

Consequently, also labor-wise NAFTA has been a bad deal for all the partners of the agreement, except, yes you guessed it right, the trans national corporations. 

The TTP will be granting even  greater privileges to transnational corporations than with NAFTA, fulfilling corporations wildest dreams. A Wikileaks’ secret document shows how transnationals will henceforth be able to sue governments if a country’s laws or policies get in the way of corporate profits. Yes, transnationals will have carte blanche to do whatever they want, like King Louis redux.

When a nation gets in the way of profits, no problem; transnationals can sue the government for damages to profitability as part of the so-called  investor-to-state dispute settlement (ISDS) agreements

What would make the "Coronation" even more complete and threatening would be an agreement  between the EU-US on a TransatlanticTtrade Pact (TTIP).

It would mean opening the door for big corporations to enforce their interests against EU legislation," said EU parliamentarian Bernd Lange. "This would deprive states of crucial policy space in important fields such as health and environment." 

The EU-Commission, however,  is dangling unsubstantiated benefits of this trade agreement  including the dubious possibility that it could bring an annual windfall of 119 billion euros ($161 billion) to the 28-member bloc.

One can only hope that the EU-Parliament requests complete transparency on all the details of these ongoing negotiations and asks all theprobing and  necessary questions. They should certainly not overlook one of the most important and negative factors in these negotiations, which is that they are dealing with a partner across the table who has spied on them (NSA) and will  probably continuing to do so.

EU-Digest

U.S., Canada and Mexico could share border security, envoy says - by Steven Chase

Mexico’s foreign envoy, visiting Ottawa Thursday, says his government seeks a much deeper “more strategic” relationship with Canada – one that some day might include a North American border security deal between all three NAFTA partners.

José Antonio Meade Kuribreña, Secretary of Foreign Affairs in the new Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s government, is meeting with Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. It’s his first visit to Canada as foreign affairs envoy.

Canada-Mexico relations suffered a setback in 2009 when the Harper government imposed entry restrictions on Mexicans seeking to enter Canada. And Canada in turn is frustrated at Mexico’s slow pace in lifting a partial ban on Canadian beef shipments because of mad-cow disease outbreaks in years past.

Canada and Mexico are partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement but efforts at deeper one-on-one ties are frequently overshadowed by each countries’ separate relationship with the United States, the third NAFTA partner.

Read more: U.S., Canada and Mexico could share border security, envoy says - The Globe and Mail