President Donald Trump celebrated the negotiation of a replacement trade deal for Nafta as an “historic” agreement that delivers on a key promise of his presidential campaign.
“I’m thrilled,” Trump said Monday in a Rose Garden ceremony marking a deal with Mexican and Canadian leaders on a successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement. “I have long contended that Nafta was perhaps the worst trade deal ever made.”
The accord makes modest revisions to a trade deal Trump once called a “disaster,” easing uncertainty for companies reliant on tariff-free commerce among the three countries.
U.S. and Canadian negotiators worked around the clock this weekend to secure an agreement just before a Sunday midnight deadline, allowing leaders from those nations and Mexico to sign the pact by late November. The 24-year-old Nafta will now be superseded by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, covering a region that trades more than $1 trillion annually.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called it a “good day for Canada & our closest trading partners” in a tweet. Jesus Seade, the Nafta negotiator for Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel López Obrador, said “Nafta 2 will give certainty and stability to trade.”
