WASHINGTON—The U.S. and Mexico have come to a preliminary agreement on new North American rules for automotive manufacturing and on other key issues — and President Donald Trump is threatening to exclude Canada from a final deal, and to hit Canada with auto tariffs.In announcing the deal Monday, Trump described the preliminary agreement with Mexico in a way that did not match what his administration is actually doing.Trump inaccurately referred to the preliminary agreement with Mexico as if it were a final trade agreement of its own, separate from North American Free Trade Agreement. He called it “the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement,” and he said he was not sure if Canada would be permitted to join it. He also threatened auto tariffs on Canada, saying, “The easiest thing we can do is tariff their cars coming in.”In fact, the U.S. and Mexico have not made a separate trade agreement to replace NAFTA, nor come to a final accord of any kind. Rather, they have made a kind of sub-deal that will now be folded into the ongoing three-country NAFTA talks as Trump’s trade officials scramble to complete a three-country deal. Trump’s rhetoric on NAFTA has regularly differed from what is actually occurring in the negotiations. It was not immediately clear on Monday whether his administration would take any steps to act on his words or if it would continue the negotiations as planned before Trump spoke.Even as Trump congratulated Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, whom he patched in via speakerphone, on their supposedly separate trade deal, Pena Nieto repeated that he wanted a three-country deal involving Canada. Trump agreed that Canada would quickly rejoin negotiations with the U.S.Trump provided no details on the deal with Mexico, which he called “incredible.” But U.S. news outlets reported a breakthrough on the automotive issue, which Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland has describes as the “h ...
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