The United States, Canada, and Mexico are currently attempting to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and it is not going well. Speaking to a group of reporters at the conclusion of the fourth round of talks yesterday, Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland denounced the U.S.’s “winner-takes-all mindset,” saying the proposals from Team Trump would “undermine NAFTA rather than modernize the agreement,” and warning Canadians that they should prepare “in a no-fuss Canadian way for the worst possible outcome.”
Driving Canada and Mexico to the breaking point could be by design, given that Trump has previously called NAFTA the “worst trade deal” ever. He might just be looking for an out. But while we already knew that Trump and some of his more protectionist advisers believe that past trade deals have been unfair to the U.S., leading to a weakened manufacturing sector—which in turn led to factory closures, depressed wages, and lost jobs—we now know that other, more crackpot theories may be at play.
The Washington Post reports that White House officials who work on trade policy were “alarmed last month” when a top adviser to the president, Peter Navarro, circulated a document that claimed an impaired manufacturing sector “leads to an increase in abortion, spousal abuse, divorce and infertility.”
It seems probable that lower labor force participation might correlate with a higher incidence of certain social maladies. But the “socioeconomic costs” that Navarro listed—including “increased drug/opioid use” and “rising mortality rate”—are pretty specific claims. It will probably surprise nobody to learn that the connection between offshoring and infertility was “presented without any data or information to back up the assertions.”
When asked about the unsubstantiated memo, a White House official who insisted on anonymity told the Post, “We don’t comment on purported internal documents. The President is working hard on behalf of the American people to make sure our trade agreements are free and fair and benefit the American worker.”
News of the document, which surprisingly doesn’t blame a weakened manufacturing sector for natural disasters and deaths of firstborn children, follows a report that White House adviser Stephen Miller chose to suppress information about the economic benefits of immigrants and refugees when pushing the administration to cap the amount of refugees it will accept at a historic low. It’s almost like ideology, rather than research, is fueling Trump’s public policy.
