Canada urges calm in response to Trump’s NAFTA threats as talks continue
VANCOUVER — Canada’s international trade minister is urging calm in response to renewed threats from Donald Trump to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the U.S. president described Sunday as the “worst trade deal ever made.”
Francois-Philippe Champagne defended the 23-year-old pact between the United States, Canada and Mexico as one of the most fruitful trading relationships in the history of mankind.
“We just have to make sure we don’t react to every news, comment, remarks,” Champagne told members of the Vancouver business community at a B.C. Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
“Because at the end, every time I sit down with them and my counterpart (U.S. Trade Representative) Robert Lighthizer, I look at numbers. I don’t look at the comments. I look at the numbers. And the numbers speak for themselves.”