A deal, says Donald Trump, is done. The US president says he will replace the North American Free Trade Agreement with a bilateral deal with Mexico. Canada will either join in or be punished with tariffs. Manufacturing jobs will return to America, and all will be fine. As usual with Mr Trump, the deal he unveiled on Monday and his ability to deliver it have been heavily oversold. It is not by any means a comprehensive updating of Nafta. Its most substantive part, on cars, is at best ineffectual and at worst destructive.
After a year in which the president has abused executive power to impose tariffs on a variety of trading partners, this would be an excellent time for Congress to reassert its authority over trade deals and demand that some sanity and transparency be restored to the progress. Nafta cannot be scrapped or rewritten without Congress’s say-so. On this basis, it should decline to give it.
Depending on the detail, much of which has yet to emerge, the deal may not be as disastrous as it looks. Much is window-dressing. The most substantive provisions are the higher requirements for rules of origin on cars. To the extent that auto manufacturers can find enough flexibility to meet the new requirements — in particular to finesse the condition that a certain proportion of value be added by higher-wage workers — many of their existing supply chains can be maintained.