Canadian trade politics has a very different focus than U.S. trade politics does:
The strongest opposition to including issues such as gender equality in discussions over the North American Free Trade Agreement has come not from the United States but from within Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday.
Speaking during a question and answer session at the first Toronto edition of the Women in the World conference, the prime minister said his government has faced hurdles in adding a gender chapter to NAFTA as it did in a free trade deal with Chile.
"The pushback we're getting is actually not from south of the border, the pushback we're getting is from Canadian Conservatives, who said 'Oh no this is about economics, it's about jobs... it's not about rhetorical flourishes of being good on environment or being good on gender,"' Trudeau said.
"To see that there is a supposedly responsible political party out there that still doesn't get that gender equality is a fundamental economic issue as well as many other things, that environmental responsibility is fundamentally an economic issue highlights that we do have a lot of work still to do in Canada."
For reference, the Canada - Chile chapter trade and gender chapter is here.
Presumably, despite anything they are saying now, the Canadian conservatives will support a renegotiated NAFTA regardless of whether or not it has a trade and gender chapter.
The bigger question is whether the Trump administration can handle this kind of chapter. The U.S. might not have pushed back yet, but we haven't gotten very far into the negotiations at this point.
It actually wouldn't shock me if the Trump administration accepted a trade and gender chapter, in exchange for other concessions. The administration could use this chapter to make things a bit awkward for Democrats who plan to vote against the new NAFTA.
