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When the revamped, Trumpified NAFTA was first announced, the general reaction here was relief. Disaster had been averted. The agreement had been saved. Maclean’s magazine featured Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland on its cover by the headine, “You’re Welcome, Canada.”

This was probably overstated. The worst-case scenario for the talks was never that Donald Trump would pull out of the agreement. Whether or not he ever had any intention of doing so, the chances he could get Congress to pass the necessary legislation were always remote.

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Rather, it was the potential for Trump to turn a simple free trade agreement among sovereign states, in which each country remained free to set its own trade and monetary policies, into a kind of customs and currency union. As I wrote in March of last year,

“It is not inconceivable that, in their obsession with the trade balance, (the Trump administration) might demand some sort of limit on how much the Canadian dollar could depreciate. (Or) suppose Canada were to strike a free trade agreement with China … (Trump) cannot possibly view that with equanimity… So suppose they were to react by demanding that we convert NAFTA into a customs union, with a common external tariff.”