$2.2 trillion and growing: The post-NAFTA trade deficit with Canada and Mexico
Donald Trump has certainly got Mexico's attention. Former Mexican president Vicente Fox is becoming increasingly incoherent – first insulting Trump, then apologizing, and now insulting again, then calling Trump supporters "lazy, uneducated, TV-watching drunks."
What has the West come to when the ramblings of a corrupt and clearly unintelligent individual from a third-world narco-state get taken seriously among any section of the political spectrum?
Now Trump needs to get the attention of Canada, and keep it. Because as much of an economic parasite as Mexico has been to the U.S., the northern neighbor is keeping pace with this dubious honor. Both of America's neighbors are hotbeds of anti-Americanism that could be readily punished through suitably designed trade sanctions.
And a good place to start would be tearing up NAFTA – the deeply flawed North American Free Trade Act – which has been disastrous for the U.S. economy.
Since NAFTA came into force at the start of 1994, the cumulative inflation-adjusted U.S. trade deficits with its NAFTA "partners" are essentially equal at US$1.1 trillion each.
That translates into $2.2 trillion of lost wealth flowing both north and south out of America into the waiting arms of these ungrateful economic leeches.
The trade deficit with Mexico gets a lot of attention, but the deficit with Canada over time is just as problematic.
This will pose a challenge for Trump if elected, since some of his Canadian supporters – such as Conrad Black – argue that Trump "has made it abundantly clear that his problems are not with U.S.-Canada free trade, but with the $58-billion trade deficit with Mexico, and the steady inflow of illegal immigrants."
A President Trump, and the American public, are free to discriminate however they like on trade issues, but an objective view finds that Canada is just as much of a post-NAFTA trade problem as Mexico.