When I asked Obama’s trade representative, Michael Froman, what his negotiating team had given up to Mexico and Canada in exchange for their TPP concessions to America, he replied: “Nothing!” Mexico and Canada were willing to play ball because TPP would give them better access to sell their products in Asian markets — and when Trump tries to renegotiate NAFTA, he won’t be able to offer that carrot now that he’s ditched TPP. …

TPP is dead, and Obama’s efforts to negotiate a U.S.-European trade alliance are barely breathing. Trump has spoken to members of Congress about his desire to reshape NAFTA in a hurry, but he has been uncharacteristically cryptic about how he intends to do that. By the end of February, his nominee for U.S. trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, was still waiting for a congressional waiver he needed to serve because of work he has done for China and Brazil. Meanwhile, Trump’s transition officials have been making the rounds, telling the civil servants whose efforts the president has so publicly ridiculed that they’re valued and talented professionals, urging them to think about creative ways the new administration could renegotiate NAFTA.

“Everyone here is thinking the same thing: We already did that!” one staffer told me. “It was called TPP, and you got rid of it.”