WASHINGTON—The vast divide between Canada and the United States over the future of North American trade burst into public view on Tuesday as top officials for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Donald Trump traded blame for their negotiating impasse. In an acrimonious joint appearance that trade experts called highly unusual, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer exchanged sharp criticism while standing a metre from each other on a stage in Washington.Their remarks went beyond the standard posturing give-and-take over particular subjects of dispute. Their speeches confirmed that important parts of the talks are going poorly, hampered not only by disagreements about policy but about basic facts of continental trade.Freeland, for the first time, challenged the Trump administration’s general approach to the negotiation, saying the “win-win-win” Vice-President Mike Pence claimed to be seeking “cannot be achieved with a winner-take-all mindset or an approach that seeks to undermine NAFTA rather than modernize it.”Certain proposals, she said, would “turn back the clock on 23 years of predictability, openness and collaboration under NAFTA.” She emphasized her opposition to a protectionist U.S. proposal for auto manufacturing, saying it would cost tens of thousands of jobs.Lighthizer, meanwhile, castigated both Canada and Mexico for what he called a “resistance to change,” saying they were fighting to preserve “one-sided benefits” enjoyed by their companies and refusing to endorse policies they agreed to as part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal that Trump killed.They held the joint appearance with their Mexican counterpart at the end of a weeklong negotiating round at which U.S. negotiators delivered a series of demands so unpalatable to Canada and Mexico that trade experts were left wondering if Trump, who has been publicly indiffer ...
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