UPDATE - Trump adviser: Trump not looking to rip up NAFTA

Sputnik
Mon, 05 Dec 2016 22:36 UTC

© AP Photo/ Carolyn Kaster

Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci

President-elect Donald Trump is not planning to repeal the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but to rescale it in a manner that renders the agreement fair, Trump transition team's senior adviser Anthony Scaramucci stated on Monday.

"I don't think we're looking to rip up NAFTA as much as we are looking to right-size it and make it fairer," Scaramucci said as quoted by the Hill. "He's got a great relationship, by the way, with the Mexican president."

Scaramucci pointed out nobody on the Trump team seeks to promote full protectionism, and noted that Trump regularly talks to Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto.

"We understand the economic harm and the impact that would take," he added.

Trump's criticism of NAFTA during the 2016 presidential campaign centered on US companies moving production facilities to Mexico and then selling their products and services in the United States.

Trump has threatened to impose a 35 percent tariff on imports from relocated factories in Mexico, but he made no mention of Canada, which depends on the US market for more than three-quarters of its exports.

The Canadian government has already indicated its willingness to discuss renegotiation of NAFTA.

Comment: RT adds more detail:

However, Trump transition official [Anthony Scaramucci], also remarked, "one of the deleterious side effects of this is that it's hollowed out the manufacturing base of the United States."

"I don't think anybody in the administration is looking for quote-unquote tariffs," he continued, "but I think they are a cudgel, if you will, to lay out there if we can't get the trade deals to be right-sided to now benefit the American people."

Other industry leaders favorable to NAFTA also sound optimistic about Trump's approach to reform, in part at least because of how NAFTA is crafted to ensure global cheap labor for multiple nations, not just one in particular.

Eduardo Solis, a former government trade negotiator and current president of the Mexican Automotive Industry Association, told an auto industry gathering last week that "the North American region has to be analyzed vs. the other regions of the world, not Mexico vs. the United States," according to Crain News Service.

Jerry Gulke, a farmer and grain futures trader who attends Federal Reserve meetings, told CNBC, "The farm states put Trump over the top," so, "You could say Trump owes us something."

The peaceful transition of power away from President Barack Obama will leave Trump with all of his predecessor's authority, including that of"fast-track" negotiation on trade deals. Congress approved the executive capacity to bypass congressional amendments on trade deals, requiring a simple-majority vote of US senators to pass a deal.

Even under this expanded prerogative to influence trade and despite media characterizations to the contrary, Scaramucci stressed that Trump will not govern as a protectionist.

"I can state categorically that if [Trump] were standing here right now, he'd tell you that he's a free trader," he said, The Hill reported.