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President Donald Trump touted a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico as a win for U.S. workers while investors breathed a sigh of relief that the key pillars of NAFTA had survived his hardball strategy to reshape global commerce, Reuters reports.
Washington and Ottawa reached an agreement on Sunday after weeks of tense bilateral talks to update the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. The United States had forged a separate trade deal with Mexico, the third member of NAFTA, in August.
The new agreement, called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), is aimed at bringing more jobs into the United States, with Canada and Mexico accepting more restrictive commerce with the United States, their main export customer.
“These measures will support many - hundreds of thousands - American jobs,” Trump said at the White House, describing the trade deal as “the most important” the United States had ever made.
“It means far more American jobs, and these are high-quality jobs,” he said. Trump had repeatedly called NAFTA a terrible deal for the United States.