President Trump Unveils Goals for a New NAFTA Deal With Canada and Mexico -TIME

President Trump Unveils Goals for a New NAFTA Deal With Canada and Mexico Posted: 17 Jul 2017 04:31 PM PDT (WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump vowed Monday to boost U.S. manufacturing by cutting the $64 billion trade deficit with Mexico as he showcased products made in all 50 states — everything from a fire truck to a baseball bat. “No longer are we going to allow other countries to break the rules, to steal our jobs and drain our wealth,” Trump said at a White House event that spilled from the East Room to the South Lawn. Shortly after Trump’s remarks, the U.S. trade representative released an 18-page report about its goals for updating the decades-old North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. In addition to reducing the trade deficit, the administration wants to insert a chapter on the digital economy into the deal. It also wants to strengthen labor and environmental obligations, as well as amending the rules of origin so that more of the products traded come from the United States and North America. Facing an investigation into his campaign’s ties with Russia and a tax and health care agenda struggling to make headway as quickly as promised, Trump is turning his focus to trade this week. Administration officials are to meet Wednesday with economic officials from China, a nation the president has accused of dumping steel on the global market to hurt U.S. steelmakers. The White House emphasis on trade follows a string of other recent theme weeks on energy, job-training and infrastructure that mostly failed to draw much attention away from the Russia inquiry. The president took his time checking out products from all over the country: Trump donned a cowboy hat from Texas. He swung a baseball bat from Louisiana. And he even climbed into the cab of a Wisconsin-built fire truck and pretended to be a firefighter, saying, “Where’s the fire? Where’s the fire? Put it out fast!” The new NAFTA objectives, a requirement to begin talks on updating the agreement in the next 30 days, contain the first specifics for a Trump administration that has made bold promises on trade. Trump has pledged to recover factory jobs and boost wages by crafting new trade deals. Supporters note that NAFTA enabled companies to charge cheaper prices for products that range from cars to vacuum cleaners, helping many U.S. consumers. The president said he only seeks a level playing field for U.S. companies and workers, but “if the playing field was slanted a little bit toward us, I would accept that, also.” But the president has a conflicted relationship with global trade. His namesake clothing business depended on the work of low-wage workers living overseas, as does the fashion line of his daughter and White House aide, Ivanka Trump. As of now, Ivanka Trump’s firm continues to have its products made overseas. Her lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said in a statement Monday that the president’s daughter “has resigned from the company, does not control its operations, and has been advised that she cannot ask the government to act in an issue involving the brand in any way, constraining her ability to intervene personally.” Trump has blasted trade deficits as hampering the economy by sending money abroad. But the trade deficit has actually improved from $762 billion in 2006 to $505 billion last year, a change brought about largely because U.S. consumers cut back spending during the Great Recession. His administration already is pursuing multiple trade cases on individual products and is weighing whether to impose tariffs and quotas on foreign steel in hopes of curbing production in China, even though that country represents a fraction of U.S. steel imports. Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said the administration’s NAFTA objectives “will be further developed as the negotiations proceed.” The senator said he wants stronger protections for intellectual property rights as part of an amended agreement with Canada and Mexico. Democratic lawmakers said Monday that Trump should move away from trade agreements that favor multinational companies to focus on workers. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-MI, said that any new agreements must provide for more jobs and higher wages that he has pledged to generate. “He’s got to deliver on those promises he made to my constituents and the working men and women across the country,” Dingell said in a phone call with reporters. When NAFTA went into effect in 1994, the United States ran a small trade surplus in goods with Mexico and a slight deficit with Canada. But the size of the deficits steadily began to increase afterward. By last year, the United States ran a $64 billion trade deficit with Mexico and a nearly $11 billion gap with Canada. Neither trade deficit is near its peak level. The trade deficit with Canada hit a high in 2008, while the trade gap with Mexico nearly reached $75 billion in 2007.

Six months in, Trump has given just one solo press conference - CNN

Six months in, Trump has given just one solo press conference

President Trump is well behind his predecessors when it comes to solo press conferences in his first year in office.

The last time President Donald Trump gave a solo press conference, Michael Flynn's resignation as national security adviser was only three days old. James Comey was still in charge of the FBI, the Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare had just been unveiled in the House of Representatives, and Donald Trump Jr. was in the spotlight -- after getting pranked on Twitter by the actor Seth Rogen.

The Trump presidency has brought a dizzying pace to the news cycle. But despite all the stunning developments of his first six months in office, Trump has largely avoided tough questions from the news media.

Trump has given only one solo press conference thus far, putting him well behind the rate of his predecessors. According to The American Presidency Project, Barack Obama gave 11 solo press conferences in his first year, George W. Bush gave five and Bill Clinton held 12.

There is one type of press conference in which Trump appears to be keeping pace, however. Presidents often hold joint press conferences with foreign leaders visiting the White House, or when they are visiting that leader's country. All three of Trump's immediate predecessors participated in at least a dozen joint press conferences in their first year; Trump has been part of 10. But those joint press conferences typically only include two questions to each leader, making them potentially less informative than longer, more free-wheeling solo press conferences.

Trump's only solo press conference came on February 16, nearly four weeks after he took office. For more than an hour, the president took shots at the media while answering questions about Flynn, who had submitted his resignation only days earlier. Trump also discussed health care, among other issues, and briefly mentioned Comey, who would be fired as FBI director three months later.

The president's press-aversion in the White House is a far cry from how he spent much of his campaign. Trump used to relish the back and forth with reporters, and would even celebrate his GOP primary wins with press conferences at his victory rallies. But as the 2016 campaign hit the home stretch in the fall, Trump steered clear of press conferences and spoke largely to Fox News.

That's continued since he took office. Days after he fired Comey in May, Trump sat down with NBC News' Lester Holt for a highly anticipated interview. But since then, Trump's only televised interviews have been with sympathetic anchors on Fox News and the televangelist Pat Robertson, another media booster. The president did, however, give an interview to Reuters last week.

CNN