U.S. President Donald Trump spent the Labour Day weekend criticizing Canada for what he called "decades of abuse" and threatening once again to terminate the current North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
President Trump’s latest tirades came after talks between Canada and the U.S. stalled hours before a deadline on reaching a revised NAFTA deal.
"There is no political necessity to keep Canada in the new NAFTA deal. If we don’t make a fair deal for the U.S. after decades of abuse, Canada will be out," Trump said on Twitter Saturday.
President Trump also Tweeted a warning to Congress to stay out of the trade negotiations with Canada.
"Congress should not interfere w/these negotiations or I will simply terminate NAFTA entirely & we will be far better off." Tweeted the Commander In Chief.
The president’s Tweets were sent shortly after he left the White House in a motorcade bound for his golf course in Virginia for the long weekend.
Trump’s move on Friday to notify Congress that he planned to sign a deal with Mexico in 90 days and would include Canada “if it is willing” appeared to avoid what many in the U.S. business community and Congress had seen as a worst-case scenario. But Saturday’s Tweets opened the door again to that outcome.
"We were far better off before NAFTA -- should never have been signed. Even the Vat Tax was not accounted for. We make new deal or go back to pre-NAFTA!" President Trump exclaimed on Twitter.
That comment repeated a threat from the president earlier in the week to forge ahead with a bilateral trade agreement with Mexico that would exclude Canada, which President Trump again accused of "ripping us off."
While trade negotiators failed to meet a deadline set by the White House last week, both U.S. and Canadian officials insisted that they were making progress at the bargaining table. They also announced that they would resume talks on Wednesday of this week after four days of intense negotiations in Washington ended without a final agreement being reached.
