It’s ironic that the one thing that trade ministers could agree on at the end of the seventh round of Nafta trade talks in Mexico City — the need to modernise the agreement to account for the shift towards a digital economy — is also likely to be the real focus of any future trade war.
Steel and aluminium tariffs announced by President Trump have, of course, sucked up all the attention in recent days, particularly as Mr Trump threatened Mexico and Canada (trade allies which would normally be exempt from such measures) with implementation of tariffs if they didn’t comply with US demands on Nafta.
In the Nafta press conference, Mexican minister Ildefonso Guajardo kept mum on this, and Canada’s foreign minister Chrystia Freeland reiterated her previous statement that any such tariffs would be “absolutely unacceptable” and would result in counter-measures.