Politics was always going to play an outsized role in congressional deliberations on the revised NAFTA deal—now known as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA—as it does with most trade agreements. Assuming that President Donald Trump addresses their concerns about labor standards in Mexico and other issues, House Democrats will have to decide whether to give the president a “big win” that he can trumpet in next year’s election. Trump will have to decide whether he’d rather have that or, by refusing to accommodate their demands, a stick with which to beat up the Democrats as do-nothing partisans. The impeachment inquiry [...]
Voters in Canada will go to the polls on Oct. 21 to decide whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should be returned to power. Trudeau swept into office following a decisive victory in the 2015 federal elections, but his popularity has declined precipitously since then as a result of several high-profile scandals. This year’s election is widely seen as a toss-up, with polls showing Trudeau’s Liberal Party running neck-and-neck with the main opposition Conservative Party, led by Andrew Scheer. In an email interview with WPR, Christopher Sands, director of the Center for Canadian Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced [...]
The rise of populism, President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” mercantilism, the worsening U.S.-China trade war and fears of a global recession all point to a new protectionist era. Yet new trade deals are still being signed, perhaps most prominently in Latin America, where at least some politicians remain enthusiastic about free trade. The region reflects the current push and pull over the terms of globalization, and how the ideas that initially drove it are being upended. There are currently over 300 free trade agreements in force around the world. They come in different shapes and sizes, but the [...]
