{"id":185850,"date":"2018-10-17T01:56:29","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T05:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=185850"},"modified":"2018-10-17T01:56:29","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T05:56:29","slug":"foreign-affairs-minister-lay-floor-pms-office-usmca-inked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/10\/17\/foreign-affairs-minister-lay-floor-pms-office-usmca-inked\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreign affairs minister lay on floor of PM’s office after USMCA was inked"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
FILE: Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Canada at the Conference on Disarmament, Palais des Nations. (Photo<\/a> by Violaine Martin via UN Geneva\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TORONTO \u2013 After more than a year of leading intense trade negotiations with the United States and Mexico, the first thing Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland did when the new agreement was reached was lay on the floor of the prime minister’s office.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did. That is true,\u201d she said Tuesday during a talk at the Fortune Global Forum in Toronto.<\/p>\n

Freeland agreed that her reaction was due to exhaustion and just the thrill of the tumultuous 14-month process finally being over.<\/p>\n

The new trilateral pact between the U.S., Mexico and\u00a0Canada, commonly referred to as USMCA, was reached at the 11th hour on Sept. 30 and sets to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement.<\/p>\n

The negotiations were tense, with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening on a number of occasions that his country would withdraw from NAFTA altogether.<\/p>\n

Freeland told a room of Canadian and foreign business leaders that the talks between the three countries had many \u201cmoments of drama,\u201d which she had anticipated from the start.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrade negotiations are this odd thing. On the one hand, they can be incredibly technical about really, really specific technical issues,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd on the other hand, they’re punctuated by these very dramatic moments … drama is par for the course.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about Trump’s personal attack on her during the process, and dealing with his negotiation strategy, she and her team responded in the Canadian way.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, our approach was to always be polite. We tried to always be friendly. That is always our national way. We believe strongly in using fact-based arguments and we did that, but to know what your bottom lines are and to stand firm in defence of the national interest,\u201d said Freeland.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were absolutely clear about that and ultimately that was understood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite efforts from U.S. negotiators,\u00a0Canada\u00a0fought hard to keep Chapter 19 \u2013 a key provision that gives independent panels the ability to resolve disputes involving companies and governments, as well as Chapter 20, the government-to-government dispute settlement mechanism.<\/p>\n

She said\u00a0Canada\u00a0did not waver during the talks, and that she felt supported by Canadians for staying steadfast.<\/p>\n

Freeland recalled being stopped and hugged by a stranger at the grocery store and how at another time a fellow passenger tried give her a business seat during a flight back from Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople were just so nice,\u201d she said. \u201cBut what I would call Canadian nice: resolute and nice. And that was really important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although it’s been reached, the USMCA deal still faces a number of hurdles before it’s officially finalized.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Bloomberg News that U.S. Congress won’t approve the renegotiated deal this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s no question this will be on the top of the agenda\u201d next year, he told the news agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO \u2013 After more than a year of leading intense trade negotiations with the United States and Mexico, the first …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":185852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","mauthors-linda-nguyen","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}