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"He is very seriously contemplating kind of a shift in the NAFTA
negotiations. His preference now, and he asked me to convey
this, is to actually negotiate with Mexico and Canada
separately," Kudlow said in an interview with Fox News.
"He may be moving quickly toward these bilateral discussions
instead of as a whole."
The United States, Canada and Mexico have been in months of
negotiations to rework the North American Free Trade Agreement,
which Trump has long criticized as having harmed the United
States economically.
On Friday, Trump said he might prefer to end NAFTA in favor of
separate bilateral agreements with the two U.S. neighbors.
Kudlow said the U.S. president was moving toward that scenario.
"He prefers bilateral negotiations and he's looking at two much
different countries," he said. "Canada's a different country
than Mexico. They have different problems.
"He believes that bilaterals have always been better. He hates
these multilaterals ... he hates large treaties."
Such a move toward separate talks would come at a tense time in
U.S. trade relations with the two countries. The Trump
administration said on Thursday it was moving ahead with tariffs
on aluminum and steel imports from Canada, Mexico and the
European Union, ending a two-month exemption and setting the
stage for a possible trade war.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the tariffs an
affront to the longstanding security partnership between Canada
and the United States, and Canada announced retaliatory steps.
In a television appearance on Sunday, Kudlow called the trade
frictions a "family quarrel."
(Reporting by Eric Walsh and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Jeffrey
Benkoe)
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