Politics Briefing newsletter: Trump’s words could affect NAFTA talks

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Good morning,

As talks to renegotiate the North American free trade agreement continue, no one ever said it would be easy. The daily chaos in the White House, sown by U.S. President Donald Trump's free-wheeling comments to the press, may be putting additional pressure on the talks. (And making things difficult for Congressional Republicans.) Industry experts are warning that American demands for the auto industry could drive manufacturing out of the NAFTA zone all together.

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CANADIAN HEADLINES

The government is now opening emergency housing in Ontario, too, to deal with an influx of asylum seekers illegally crossing the Canada-U.S. border.

The leaders of Alberta's two pre-merger conservative parties are distancing themselves from The Rebel Media, a provocative online outlet, after its controversial coverage of the protests in Virgina last week.

Your long read for lunchtime: one of the Liberal government's stated goals for legalizing marijuana is to get the drug out of the control of organized crime. But, as a Globe investigation finds, that may be easier said than done.

And another incident shows some of the challenges the federal government has with its IT infrastructure: a CBC report details how a small air conditioner leak in an office in June knocked out important Statistics Canada servers for hours.

John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail) on Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and The Rebel: "Mr. Scheer's biggest challenge right now isn't healing the divisions from the leadership race and solidifying support from the party's base. His biggest challenge is persuading all Canadians that his party is open and inclusive, at a time when Mr. Trump is poisoning the well of public discourse."

Konrad Yakabuski (The Globe and Mail) on Mélanie Joly's broadcasting policy: "In 21 months as Canada's Heritage Minister, Mélanie Joly has become known for saying as little as possible in as many words as possible. She always seems to be playing for time, despite insisting that she's hard at work crafting a Canadian cultural policy revolution for the digital age.

Ms. Joly will have one last chance to reverse that impression when, next month, she finally unveils her plan to help Canada's struggling private broadcasters stay afloat all while answering calls from local creators for more funding to help them produce domestic programming. 'It is important to have a strong cultural sector in the country,' Ms. Joly said this week in a typically empty statement. 'We have to be bold.'"

Gary Mason (The Globe and Mail) on foreign influence in Canadian elections: "Elections Canada has received more than 100 complaints about the parts played by third parties in the 2015 federal election campaign. A percentage concerns the role that U.S.-based environmental activist foundations such as Tides might have had in it. A number of parties out in force during the campaign – the Dogwood Initiative, Leadnow, and Greenpeace among them – receive funding from the U.S. advocacy group. In some cases, that money appears to make up a substantial amount of their annual revenue. When it came to the federal election, not all of these not-for-profits focused on the same issue. For some, it was pipelines. For others, it was, ironically enough, campaign-finance reform. But whether you agree or disagree with the issues these groups were fighting for is beside the point."

The Globe and Mail editorial board on Saudi Arabia's arms blunder: " On Wednesday, Riyadh tried to justify the use of combat vehicles on its citizens as a defensive action similar to the gunning down of the self-radicalized loner who shot and killed a Canadian soldier in Ottawa on Oct. 22, 2014, and then attempted to force his way into Parliament. 'Canadian authorities did fight the attacker and killed him on the spot to protect Canadian civilians,' reads a statement from the Saudi embassy in Ottawa. 'Fighting terrorism and protecting innocent civilians are not human-rights violations.' We agree. We just don't see how that relates to al-Qatif, where the Saudi government has used brute force to remove thousands of people from an ancient Shia village called Awamiya, with the intention of razing it."

Andrei Sulzenko (The Globe and Mail) on the U.S.'s weak auto strategy: "It must be embarrassing for the U.S. Trade Representative to try to make the case that NAFTA has been unfair to American auto manufacturing. The convenient proxy for this unfairness is the auto-trade deficit with Mexico, which is substantial and growing. On the surface, this argument is appealing, as it dumbs down a complex reality. Aside from the fact that trade surpluses or deficits don't reveal very much about relative competitiveness – they have more to do with the interplay of intricate international supply chains and relative-demand conditions – they are also grossly misleading."

INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES

Two suspected terror attacks have shaken Spain over the past day. On Thursday, a van plowed into pedestrians in the busy Las Ramblas tourist district, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more. As security forces hunted for the van's driver, police said they had killed five attackers in the town of Cambrils, to thwart a "terrorist attack" using explosive belts. Six civilians and a police officer were injured in the operation. Police said the Cambrils plot was linked to the van attack. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the deadly van attack on Thursday.

China's latest round of economic sanctions on North Korea led to protests on the Chinese border with North Korea on Thursday. Dozens of trucks carrying melting North Korean seafood waited to enter China, but were blocked from crossing the border. North Korean product is an essential part of business in northeastern China, but the Chinese government's firm stance on sanctions against North Korea is hurting the region. Cui Yanzhi, a trader in the Chinese city of Hunchun, said "a small city with a population of only 200,000, including tens of thousands working in the seafood industry, suddenly has nothing to do." Some traders responded to the sanctions by holding banners demanding compensation for their losses. "The money from our own blood and sweat is all sitting on a bridge to China. Please, Chinese customs, let us go," pleaded one of the banners.

Venezuela's new top prosecutor, Tarek Saab, is vowing to crack down on protesters who have taken to the country's streets since April. On Thursday, Mr. Saab vowed to hunt down and jail the protest leaders. The threats came before a new hate crimes law, which is expected to be approved today. The new law "against hate and intolerance" has been denounced by rights groups as a sham aimed at persecuting the opposition. "It will be a point of honor for the public prosecutor's office to identify who was responsible for each of the hate crimes that occurred in this country," Saab said yesterday. Venezuelan security forces and pro-government groups were believed responsible for the deaths of at least 73 demonstrators since April, the United Nations said in an Aug. 8 report.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing growing calls to denounce Donald Trump's response to the violent, anti-Semitic displays in Virginia. Mr. Netanyahu said nothing about Mr. Trump's apparent defence of white supremacists, which has upset a growing number of Israelis. "We must set a clear boundary against anti-Semitism and protect the Jewish people wherever they may be. There are no grey areas when it comes to these issues," opposition lawmaker Stav Shaffir wrote in the liberal daily Haaretz.

James Whitman (The Globe and Mail) on American Nazis: "Instead of asking whether American institutions will survive the Trump presidency, we must ask how American institutions can be put in the service of wrongful ends. After all, while America's early-20th-century race laws are gone, it still has the same overheated democratic order and common-law flexibility that it had back then. These institutions might no longer produce Jim Crow laws; but the American criminal-justice system, for example, remains a poster child for institutionalized racism. Americans should be ashamed that their country's institutions laid the groundwork for Nazi race law."

John McCoy and David Jones (The Globe and Mail) on right wing extremism: "The vitriolic political rhetoric employed by politicians in the United States, Europe and even Canada has clearly contributed to an emboldened right-wing extremist movement; in many ways they have found their safe space. Yet, we cannot explain what happened in Charlottesville solely through the lens of political rhetoric. To do so is intellectually lazy and leaves us with an incomplete understanding of the phenomenon."

The New York Times editorial board on chaos in Venezuela: "The inflation rate for 2017 is estimated at 720 percent, and it is believed that 80 percent of Venezuelans live in poverty, some suffering from malnutrition and full-scale hunger. More than 120 people have died in several months of protests demanding Mr. Maduro's removal. Some analysts fear outright civil war...The precipitous decline of Venezuela is not just a tragedy for its people, but a threat to regional stability. Mr. Trump should continue to toughen sanctions, but any lasting solution will be achieved only in concert with regional leaders."