The Art of What?

Terry H. Schwadron

The NAFTA issue arose and went away in the same day. Or it didn’t, and will be back shortly.

Maybe this was Wacky Wednesday in a week unduly burdened with Presidential Things to Do Now, in time to meet the arbitrary first-100-days-in-office deadline. Set back by repeated court battles over executive orders, lost legislative opportunities and a continuing loud murmur of disquiet in the streets, the President seems desperate to eke out some victories for the 100-day media reviews of his presidency.

First came word that the President was moving quickly to start the formal process of withdrawing from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a long-standing target for Team Trump. Indeed, it was said that the White House had prepared the appropriate paperwork to repeal the treaty, which he has described as disastrous for the U.S., so that he could start fresh.

That word drew calls from Ottawa and Mexico City to the White House to complain — among other things, not only for the substance of repeal, but also for the fact that they had to learn about the moves from the media.

By evening, Mr. Trump flip-flopped and said he now wanted to modernize and renegotiate certain clauses without reversals.

On Thursday, the President said he decided not to pull the United Sates out of NAFTA because it would have been a “shock to the system.”

“I decided rather than terminating NAFTA, which would be a pretty big, you know, shock to the system, we will renegotiate,” Trump said, adding that talks would “start very soon. It’s actually starting today.”

There will be time later for him to move to withdraw from the agreement if talks with Mexico and Canada falter.

“Now, if I’m unable to make a fair deal, if I’m unable to make a fair deal for the United States, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA,” he said. “But we’re going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot.”

Now, call me crazy, but wouldn’t you think the President of the United States would know that repealing NAFTA might “shock” the system before starting to throw his weight around on this question before he spoke in the first place? Wouldn’t you think that the nation’s businessman-president would have prepared and know about whether repeal would shock the system?

For that matter, do we have any idea about what exactly he wants NAFTA to achieve?

Just for nothing, the stock market stalled on the news, and the value of the peso declined against a strengthening U.S. dollar, which happens to worsen U.S. trade deficit numbers. Meanwhile, jobs continue to move to Mexico from the United States, despite the counter arguments we have heard from the White House.

Where in the Art of the Deal is the chapter about doing absolutely no preparation and then going on in public to confuse everyone about what you intend?

As close as I’ve been able to get from general sources is that NAFTA pre-dated the Internet, so there are a lot of references to a pre-electronic business environment in the deal. But I’ve also read plenty to say that NAFTA is woven through and through our trade and manufacturing worlds, and trying to remove it is next to impossible. Instead, the advice is to go after specific problem areas where they arise.

This is to say nothing of supporting a more economically viable Mexico to further stem immigration through the Southern border.

Even allies and trade partners were surprised by the White House when news broke that the administration was considering a draft executive order that would have announced the U.S.’s intent to leave the trade deal. Late Wednesday, Trump informed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto in a pair of phone calls that he would not pull out of NAFTA.

Trump claimed Thursday that the calls had changed his mind. He said that he “was going to terminate NAFTA two or three days from now” but that Trudeau and Peña Nieto asked him to renegotiate instead. The move would have also triggered a widespread backlash from lawmakers in both parties who back free trade and the U.S. business community. The New York Times quoted some Mexican legislators calling Mr. Trump a “bluffer” rather than a shrewd negotiator.

Now if this was some former community organizer from Chicago or computer-illiterate former Secretary of State who had botched this communication, we would never hear the end of this kind of bad communication and strategic thinking.

But with Team Trump, we praise disorder and call it negotiating on the fly.

It is the Art of the Schlemiel.

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