Canada joins North America’s revised trade deal

NORTH AMERICA is “a much more stable place than it was yesterday”, declared Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, on October 1st. That is because on the day before, after months of negotiations, Canada joined an agreement between Mexico and the United States that largely preserves a 24-year-old free-trade accord among the three countries. President Donald Trump, who took office threatening to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has settled for a modest revision of it. Of course, he gave it a new America-first name: the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). He may think the name’s ugliness is a virtue. It is “too long and unpronounceable to fit in a 30-second attack ad”, noted one analyst.