Dear Editor:
Donald Trump is tightening up the screws by announcing that he might cancel the North American Free Trade Agreement. A good deal for him would be the one where the U.S. gets all the advantages and Canada and Mexico all the disadvantages. To be sure of this, he went as far as not even wanting a dispute mediation court. It is either “my way or the highway.”
This agreement is just a one-way agreement. We do not need it.
A business agreement implies equality and fairness. The U.S. under Donald Trump wants to be more equal than anybody else.
Scrap the whole thing. Canada should look for other markets.
The U.S. needs our natural resources, especially water. We are in a position of dictating our own terms in its sale for a change. We can survive the same way we did prior to free trade.
The U.S. government will respect us more for not grovelling for the scraps they are willing to give us during these new and hardly improved free trade negotiations.
The Trump administration started by saying that the U.S. lost some 700,000 jobs during our last NAFTA agreement. Whose fault is it? Did not their companies export their jobs to China and Mexico?
Does not half of Canada shop and holiday in the U.S., spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the U.S.? Does not Canada purchase tons of California produce to the detriment of our own agricultural industries even when they are in season? If things are so bad for them, why have they opened so many of their stores in Canada?
Donald Trump is a bully and an opportunist. He thinks that he can treat Canada like he treats the contestants in The Apprentice. I would be surprised if he lasts four years. In Canada, buy Canadian first – if and when available.
John Bueno
North Vancouver
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