In Reagan country, Trudeau espouses virtue of free trade

Share

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used a speech at the symbolic home of one of the architects of the North American free-trade agreement to urge the United States to remain at the bargaining table, saying free trade could be a win-win, but Canada will not be a "pushover" in the negotiations.

In remarks delivered to a sold-out crowd at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in Simi Valley, northwest of Los Angeles, Mr. Trudeau highlighted the historic bonds between Canada and the United States and warned that the North American free-trade agreement had brought social and economic and benefits too important to abandon.

"The generation of Canadian, American and Mexican leaders who bequeathed to us the original treaty, in a very real sense, invented the idea of North America," he said.

"Uninventing it would come at a cost beyond the economic, one I don't think anyone can now entirely predict or understand."

At the same time, he signalled that Canada doesn't intend to bow to the NAFTA demands of the United States.

Quoting his father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who once said living next to the United States was like a mouse sleeping next to an elephant, Mr. Trudeau said "personally I think of us as less of a mouse and more of a moose – strong, resilient, but still massively outweighed."

The location of the speech at Mr. Reagan's presidential library was a deliberately symbolic gesture for Mr. Trudeau, who is in the midst of tense efforts to renegotiate NAFTA even as U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to cancel the deal.

A hero to many Republicans, Mr. Reagan signed the first U.S.-Canada trade pact that paved the way for NAFTA and Mr. Trudeau's speech was intended to signal to Republicans in Congress as well as the Trump administration that walking away from free trade would be trampling on Mr. Reagan's legacy. During a tour of the Reagan Library, Mr. Trudeau was given a copy of pages from the U.S.-Canada free-trade agreement signed by Mr. Reagan, who had a fractious relationship with his father.

Mr. Trudeau also acknowledged Mr. Trump's main criticism of NAFTA: that job losses in the manufacturing sector because of globalization are among the reasons the United States needs to walk away from the agreement.

Governments, including Canada, need to do a better job of spreading the benefits of free trade more widely across the work force, Mr. Trudeau said. "The truth is that President Trump and I agree about this: Too many people have been left behind, even as our economies surged," he said.

Bruce Heyman, who served as U.S. ambassador to Canada for president Barack Obama, expected Mr. Trudeau's speech at an iconic site for Republicans would send a strong signal to the U.S. Congress that free trade is not a partisan issue.

"I'm hopeful Republicans and Democrats are listening to the message that is being told," he said.

Cathy Crosco, a Los Angeles-area event planner, attended the speech hoping to hear if Mr. Trudeau would use the venue to offer a message that would be more be sympathetic to Republican interests, particularly on U.S. border security. "Reagan was such a staunch Republican and your Prime Minister is such a staunch liberal that it just intrigues me to see if he feels as comfortable as Reagan would have been in his yard," she said.

The speech was the highlight of Mr. Trudeau's four-day trip to the United States, which included a stop in Silicon Valley. Earlier in the day, Mr. Trudeau met with California Governor Jerry Brown, who said he hopes to sign agreements with Canadian provinces on zero-emission vehicles.

"I'm hoping that Canada, California, and the rest of America can really commit to developing the technologies that will allow us to have zero-emission vehicles be a big part of our future," Mr. Brown said.