As U.S. shocks with NAFTA demands, other countries asking: What does Trump want?

Alexander Panetta
The Associated Press in the Times Colonist
October 15, 2017
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, United States

ARLINGTON, United States — The chief U.S. negotiator shrugged his shoulders when asked about signs of trouble in the NAFTA talks on Sunday. John Melle… offered a one-word reply about how it’s going. “Fabulous,” he said. Upon leaving those rooms, people are saying the exact opposite. The No. 1 discussion topic at this current round is whether Melle’s team is being ordered to sabotage the talks, so President Donald Trump can declare NAFTA has failed. That’s because the U.S. team has unfurled a half-dozen bombshells so far beyond the realm of what’s palatable to the other parties that it’s all but exploded earlier hopes of a quick, easy negotiation. …One non-U.S. official described the body language of American negotiators as: “Kind of sheepish. They say, ‘We don’t have any flexibility on this.” …It would fit a tactic Trump has been accused of: Break now, fix later.

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