After spending a year and a half alienating our friends, punishing our farmers and manufacturers with devastating tariffs and counter-tariffs, and fracturing the hard-won alliance we had built to isolate and pressure China, we finally got a new trade deal — and a "new" trade strategy.
On Sunday evening, news broke that Canada agreed to the terms of a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement. Not merely renegotiated: rebranded! What was once the easily pronounceable "NAFTA" will hereafter be the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or "USMCA."
Why the name change was needed is a little unclear. Our marketer in chief clearly loves rebranding things, and USMCA, while it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does have the virtue of literally putting America first.