U.S. president cheers new USMCA trade deal, heralds end of NAFTA era

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump is taking a victory lap at the White House, cheering Sunday’s last-minute free trade deal and pronouncing the death of the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement.

Trump, flanked by trade ambassador Robert Lighthizer and adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, is calling the continent’s new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement the most important trade deal the U.S. has ever made.

He says the deal, reached late Sunday, will govern $1.2 trillion US in trade, making it the biggest agreement in the country’s history, and marks the end of an era during which the U.S. has been “treated so badly” on trade by other countries around the world.

Trump also says the deal treats American workers with “fairness and reciprocity,” unlike NAFTA, which he again described as the worst deal ever agreed to by the United States.

And he’s cheering the fact it will give American farmers and dairy producers greater access to markets in Canada and Mexico, protect auto manufacturing jobs and encourage innovation on U.S. soil.

Trump says he spoke earlier today with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and outgoing Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto, and is also extending thanks to Pena Nieto’s replacement, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.