Everything you’re arguing here is completely plausible, but I think your read on the final state of the revised NAFTA undersells the work of a lot of skilled negotiators from Canada and Mexico.
Trump has historically (as in, pre-politics) demonstrated a clear and consistent belief that all trades are zero sum. Either you’re winning, or they are. It’s always important to remember that Trump is, himself, a fairly typical low information right wing voter in his mentality. He’s exactly the sort of person who would be susceptible to the kind of misinformation you’re describing.
But you may be right, it may all just be theatre for the base. Either way, it sure as hell isn’t about the 20kg of fent siezed at the Canadian border last year.
Everything you’re arguing here is completely plausible, but I think your read on the final state of the revised NAFTA undersells the work of a lot of skilled negotiators from Canada and Mexico.
Thing is, when I went into Trump Term 1, I’ve seen similar shennanigans from Republican politicians before. Like, Ron Paul – retired now – is right-libertarian, a pretty hard advocate for laissez-faire free trade. I once listened to a recording of a speech he gave in Texas, where he’s got a constituency that doesn’t like NAFTA much. He spent most of the speech railing on NAFTA (without much by way of specifics) to lots of cheering, which came as quite a surprise to me at the time. His justification was brief and a lot quieter – that NAFTA wasn’t “real free trade” because it wasn’t free enough.
The thing is, the anti-NAFTA movement is really from people who wanted protectionist trade policy. But most people who echo that don’t really have a great handle on the specifics. They just get a high level “NAFTA == bad”.
That is, he was advocating for the opposite of the policy that probably a lot of constituenents wanted, but doing so in such a way as to leave them with the impression that he was doing what they wanted.
So if you’re a politician who wants to run free trade policy representing people who have been sold on protectionist trade policy, that was definitely an existing route.
Trump’s anti-NAFTA speeches had the same sort of structure. Long, emotional, norm-violating and concrete-detail-free chunks about getting rid of NAFTA and how bad NAFTA was, then a shorter bit “or throw it out and replace it with a new deal that’s good for America”.
When Trump proposed eliminating NAFTA in Term 1, I went and dug up his whitepaper. Same sort of idea. All-caps stuff up front that was very vague and gave the impression that NAFTA was almost-certainly going to go away, but with no specifics. The actual details further in were a lot more boring.
Trump goes a lot farther than Paul or most of our politicians – like, Trump doesn’t restrain himself to maybe misleading statements, outright makes major, self-contradictory statements. Trump is willing to not just say something misleading, but outright lie to a degree that I think that we’re not used to with US Presidents.
But I don’t think that he’s actually doing something new here. This is already in the playbook. He’s just willing to lie to an unprecedented degree.
A lot of Republican voters are unhappy about illegal immigration. If you recall, the centerpiece of his Term 1 campaign was “The Wall”. He made all kinds of outrageous statements. What a lot of people focused on was his willingness to break norms. The impression he gave to a listener was that there would be a huge wall built spanning the US-Mexico border. There was tremendous noise generated about it when he was in office, lots of talk about funds and so forth…and then nothing happened.
What I think a number of people forget – or for younger folks, don’t know – is that Bush Jr did virtually the same thing, twenty years ago. In Bush’s case, it wasn’t as prominent, and the term used was “fence” instead of “wall”. The impression it gave was again that the border would be spanned fully.
On June 23, Trump visited Yuma, Arizona, for a campaign rally commemorating the completion of 200 miles (320 km) of the wall.[74] U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed that almost all of this was replacement fencing.[75] By the end of Trump’s term on January 21, 2021, 452 miles (727 km) had been built at last report by CBP on January 5, much of it replacing outdated or dilapidated existing barriers.[76]
Needless to say, this isn’t the wall spanning the border that one would walk away from with the impression of Trump building after having listened to his speeches. It’s not nothing, but it’s mostly maintenance on existing fencing.
Everything you’re arguing here is completely plausible, but I think your read on the final state of the revised NAFTA undersells the work of a lot of skilled negotiators from Canada and Mexico.
Trump has historically (as in, pre-politics) demonstrated a clear and consistent belief that all trades are zero sum. Either you’re winning, or they are. It’s always important to remember that Trump is, himself, a fairly typical low information right wing voter in his mentality. He’s exactly the sort of person who would be susceptible to the kind of misinformation you’re describing.
But you may be right, it may all just be theatre for the base. Either way, it sure as hell isn’t about the 20kg of fent siezed at the Canadian border last year.
Thing is, when I went into Trump Term 1, I’ve seen similar shennanigans from Republican politicians before. Like, Ron Paul – retired now – is right-libertarian, a pretty hard advocate for laissez-faire free trade. I once listened to a recording of a speech he gave in Texas, where he’s got a constituency that doesn’t like NAFTA much. He spent most of the speech railing on NAFTA (without much by way of specifics) to lots of cheering, which came as quite a surprise to me at the time. His justification was brief and a lot quieter – that NAFTA wasn’t “real free trade” because it wasn’t free enough.
The thing is, the anti-NAFTA movement is really from people who wanted protectionist trade policy. But most people who echo that don’t really have a great handle on the specifics. They just get a high level “NAFTA == bad”.
That is, he was advocating for the opposite of the policy that probably a lot of constituenents wanted, but doing so in such a way as to leave them with the impression that he was doing what they wanted.
So if you’re a politician who wants to run free trade policy representing people who have been sold on protectionist trade policy, that was definitely an existing route.
Trump’s anti-NAFTA speeches had the same sort of structure. Long, emotional, norm-violating and concrete-detail-free chunks about getting rid of NAFTA and how bad NAFTA was, then a shorter bit “or throw it out and replace it with a new deal that’s good for America”.
When Trump proposed eliminating NAFTA in Term 1, I went and dug up his whitepaper. Same sort of idea. All-caps stuff up front that was very vague and gave the impression that NAFTA was almost-certainly going to go away, but with no specifics. The actual details further in were a lot more boring.
Trump goes a lot farther than Paul or most of our politicians – like, Trump doesn’t restrain himself to maybe misleading statements, outright makes major, self-contradictory statements. Trump is willing to not just say something misleading, but outright lie to a degree that I think that we’re not used to with US Presidents.
But I don’t think that he’s actually doing something new here. This is already in the playbook. He’s just willing to lie to an unprecedented degree.
A lot of Republican voters are unhappy about illegal immigration. If you recall, the centerpiece of his Term 1 campaign was “The Wall”. He made all kinds of outrageous statements. What a lot of people focused on was his willingness to break norms. The impression he gave to a listener was that there would be a huge wall built spanning the US-Mexico border. There was tremendous noise generated about it when he was in office, lots of talk about funds and so forth…and then nothing happened.
What I think a number of people forget – or for younger folks, don’t know – is that Bush Jr did virtually the same thing, twenty years ago. In Bush’s case, it wasn’t as prominent, and the term used was “fence” instead of “wall”. The impression it gave was again that the border would be spanned fully.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Fence_Act_of_2006.
That actually did result in some amount of fencing being constructed around official border checkpoints.
How about Trump’s wall?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico–United_States_border_wall
Needless to say, this isn’t the wall spanning the border that one would walk away from with the impression of Trump building after having listened to his speeches. It’s not nothing, but it’s mostly maintenance on existing fencing.