Access is everything. That is the advice former prime minister Brian Mulroney has for leaders in the age of U.S. President Donald Trump.
“You’re invited by the president of the U.S., you go. Access is the currency of success,” Mulroney said Tuesday at a forum on North America’s future, organized by the Canadian Council for the Americas.
Mulroney made the remarks as Canadian and Mexican leaders strategize how to handle Trump’s unorthodox presidency, and his goal to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement to favour American interests.
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“It’s hard to imagine two people with less in common than Trump and Trudeau. But he worked at it and they had a very successful meeting,” Mulroney said of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s visit to Washington last week.
That, Mulroney said, was a more productive approach than the one Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto took last month when he cancelled a visit to Washington after Trump issued an ultimatum that Mexico would have to pay for his planned wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.
An eventual visit to Washington will go a long way to improving Mexico’s relationship with Trump, Mulroney told the Toronto forum, attended by about 250 corporate executives, bankers and analysts. “When the Mexican president goes to meet Trump, he will get high marks and he will advance Mexico’s case and we will come out of this in one piece with a strong NAFTA.”
Mulroney acknowledged that Mexico faces steep challenges in its relationship with the U.S., compared to Canada. “There is a world of difference between the NAFTA negotiations that I think (the U.S.) sees coming with Mexico and what they see coming with us.”
“We are members of NATO and NORAD together. We are G7 members together. Our relationship is a different kettle of fish.”
But Mulroney said it’s important to take a trilateral approach to North American trade, as many trade issues affect all three countries, including changes to independent dispute mechanisms and rules of origin, which say how to determine which country made which product.
“This throw-under-the-bus stuff is for losers not winners and Canada is a winner,” he said, in reference to Mexican worries that Canada might go it alone and negotiate with the U.S. bilaterally.
Mulroney, who has known Trump for 25 years, warned the audience not to underestimate the new president or pass judgment prematurely. “He is somewhat unorthodox as a president but that doesn’t mean you can’t be surprised on the upside.”
“If Trump can deliver on his agenda on some level he has a chance of rewriting history and going down big time … If you don’t do big things while you’re in office, history will forget you.”
Mulroney attended a cancer fundraising event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Saturday. Invited on stage by Canadian songwriter David Foster, Mulroney sang When Irish Eyes are Smiling — an encore performance for the former prime minister, who sang it for then President Ronald Reagan in Quebec City in 1985.
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