With president Donald Trump formally withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership this week, signaling his intention to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and pledging an America first approach, questions are swirling around what this all means for global trade — including trade-reliant New Brunswick.
Premier Brian Gallant says his government has to keep communicating to the Trump administration, and others south of the border, that it’s very important that the U.S. and Canada have robust trade between our two countries.
“New Brunswick is the province in Canada that depends the most on trade we are also the province that has one of the highest if not the highest percentage of our exports going to the U.S.” says Gallant. “So you can be very certain that trade with the U.S. is top of mind for our government and for the people of New Brunswick.”
Gallant says the TPP withdrawal comes as no surprise and that they had been briefed that that was going to be a likely outcome but when it comes to NAFTA:
“If we do have discussions in terms of stregthening NAFTA, that’s fine. But we have to keep reminding ourselves that the United States and Canada both depend on robust trade between our two countries,” says Gallant. “Millions of jobs are directly created in the U.S. because of Canada.”
Canada has been told not to worry by economic advisor to Trump, Stephen Schwarzman, who said that Canada is well regarded. Things are quite rocky right now however with the Mexico, with president Enrique Pena Nieto tweeting that he won’t be attended a scheduled meeting with Trump after the U.S. president tweeted this:
The U.S. has a 60 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico. It has been a one-sided deal from the beginning of NAFTA with massive numbers…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2017
of jobs and companies lost. If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2017
It’s estimated the wall will cost from $12 to $15 billion dollars.
