A NAFTA termination letter from U.S. President Donald Trump could become the ultimate sleight of hand from Washington as it seeks to gain negotiating leverage over Canada and Mexico in talks to update the 24-year-old trade pact.

While such a letter would start a six-month exit clock ticking, the United States would not be legally bound to quit the North American Free Trade Agreement once it expires.

Unlike the irreversible missile that Britain fired when it triggered a two-year countdown to its exit from the European Union last March, quitting NAFTA would still be optional for Trump. And an exit would almost certainly face court challenges over Trump’s authority to leave without consent from Congress.

​Quitting NAFTA without quitting

Canadian government sources told Reuters on Wednesday that they are increasingly convinced that Trump will soon announce the U.S. intention to pull out of NAFTA. The news sent Canadian and Mexican currencies lower and hurt stocks across the continent.

Sending a termination letter would allow Trump, who has been frustrated with Mexican and Canadian reluctance to meet aggressive U.S. demands on the sourcing of automotive parts and on dispute settlement, to take a key step toward meeting his campaign promise of quitting NAFTA if it cannot be revised to shrink U.S. trade deficits.

“He can gain political mileage out of a big announcement to quit NAFTA without actually doing it,” said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow and trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who has written extensively on NAFTA termination issues.

“He could say that he’ll withdraw from NAFTA sometime after the six-month deadline if we don’t get better results in the negotiations,” Hufbauer said.

Two more rounds, then a pause?

Using a withdrawal letter in this manner fits in with a scenario that some industry lobbyists and trade observers say is increasingly likely: If there’s no deal after two more scheduled negotiating rounds in late January and March, NAFTA talks would be put on hold for several months as Mexico’s presidential election campaign gets under way.

By the time talks resume, the withdrawal threat could have more potency as a negotiating tactic.

NAFTA’s Article 2205 states: “A party may withdraw from this agreement six months after it provides written notice of withdrawal to the other parties. If a party withdraws, the agreement shall remain in force for the remaining parties.”

The president would be then free to declare the restoration of U.S. tariffs to levels agreed at the World Trade Organization, although experts say that Canada would revert to the terms of a 1987 U.S. trade agreement that predated NAFTA.

Legal challenges likely

Any move by Trump to invoke this clause is almost certain to be met with immediate legal challenges from U.S. business groups that would argue that congressional consent would be required because the U.S. Constitution grants Congress authority over trade matters.

In recent weeks, Republican lawmakers have been raising increasing concerns about the dangers of quitting NAFTA, particularly in U.S. farm states that count Mexico as their biggest grains customer.

On Wednesday, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue called quitting NAFTA a “grave mistake” that would send the U.S. economy “five steps back.”

Because implementing legislation would remain on the books, many provisions of NAFTA would still be active, including trade and investment dispute arbitration systems that the Trump administration wants to change.

“I think this is headed for a huge legal morass if the president were to unilaterally send a notice of withdrawal,” Jennifer Hillman, a Georgetown University law professor and former WTO appellate judge, told Reuters in November.
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A U.S. congressional report issued Wednesday accused Russia of mounting a protracted assault on democracy at home and abroad, and urged a multi-pronged counter-strategy that begins with U.S. presidential leadership, something the report alleged has been lacking from Donald Trump.

Prepared by Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and provided in advance to VOA, the report said, “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s regime has developed a formidable set of tools to exert influence abroad” and “appears intent on using almost any means possible to undermine democratic institutions and trans-Atlantic alliances.”

Based on months of research and informational exchanges with foreign governments targeted by the Kremlin, the 206-page report exhaustively documented the full array of tools Russia has wielded beyond its borders.

Putin’s “asymmetric arsenal” ranges from “a lethal blend of conventional military assaults, assassinations, disinformation campaigns, [and] cyberattacks” in Ukraine to plotting a coup in Montenegro to disinformation and cyberattacks in Germany, France, the United Kingdom and beyond, according to the report.

The document also details years of alleged oppression and violence within Russia against Putin’s perceived adversaries and critics. The Russian leader, the report said, “gained and solidified power by exploiting blackmail, fears of terrorism, and war” and “combined military adventurism and aggression abroad with propaganda and political repression at home, to persuade a domestic audience that he is restoring Russia to greatness.”

“This is not a report on the hacking of the 2016 [U.S.] election. It’s a report about how Russia operates around the world,” said a committee staff members who helped prepare the document, adding that the report is the first from a U.S. governmental entity that spells out “the scale and scope” of the Russian threat.

Without fully understanding that threat, the staffer said, “you can’t prevent it from happening again.”

The report detailed steps European nations have taken to combat Russian influence, both individually and within organizations such as NATO and the European Union. The United States, it contended, lags far behind.

“President Trump has been negligent in acknowledging and responding to the threat to U.S. national security posed by Putin’s meddling,” the report said. “The president should immediately declare that it is U.S. policy to counter and deter all forms of the Kremlin’s hybrid threats against the United States and around the world. … The president should also present to Congress a comprehensive national strategy to counter these grave national security threats.”

Establishing a fusion cell

The report recommended establishing an inter-agency task force or “fusion cell” for combating Russian influence modeled on the National Counterterrorism Center. It also recommended designating countries that employ malign influence operations as “State Hybrid Threat Actors,” and subjecting them to “a pre-emptive and escalatory sanctions regime.”

Minority reports are common on Capitol Hill. Like all such reports, this one was prepared for the full Foreign Relations Committee, which is Republican-led.

“We think a lot of [the report’s] recommendations and findings would be supported on a bipartisan basis,” a committee staff member said.

Putin has consistently ridiculed any suggestion of foreign meddling, and last year Trump appeared to back him up, at least in regard to the 2016 U.S. election.

“He [Putin] said he didn’t meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times,” Trump told reporters after a November meeting with the Russian leader in Vietnam. “Every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that.’ And I believe, I really believe, that when he tells me that, he means it.”

Prominent Republicans have joined Democrats in slamming Trump’s remarks.

“There’s nothing ‘America First’ about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community,” Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona said in a statement. “Vladimir Putin does not have America’s interests at heart. To believe otherwise is not only naïve but also places our national security at risk.”

In an interview last year on Australian Broadcasting Corp, McCain said, “I think he [Putin] is the premier and most important threat, more so than ISIS.”

Bipartisan probes

Multiple U.S. congressional committees are conducting bipartisan probes of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, with final reports possible later this year. In the interim, lawmakers of both political parties have spoken out.

“What I will confirm is that the Russian intelligence service is determined, clever,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, said in October. “And I recommend that every campaign and every election official take this very seriously.”

“The Russian active measures did not end on Election Day 2016,” the committee’s top Democrat, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said, adding that the United States should take a “more aggressive whole government approach” to combat Russian interference.

In pursuing a comprehensive strategy, Democratic staff members on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recommended examining Russia’s actions in Europe and elsewhere.

“The Europeans have learned some of these lessons and we can learn from them,” a staff member said. “Russia can be deterred.”

“There is a long bipartisan tradition in Congress in support of firm policies to counter Russian government aggression and abuse against its own citizens, our allies, and universal values,” the Foreign Relation Committee’s top Democrat, Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, wrote in an introduction to the document. “This report seeks to continue that tradition.”

— This report was embargoed and, as a result, VOA was unable to get White House reaction before its release.
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A storm that slammed a California coastal community is over. The search for its victims is not.

Authorities in Santa Barbara County were still trying to reach new areas and dig into the destruction to find dead, injured or trapped people after a powerful mud flow swept away dozens of homes.

At least 13 people were confirmed dead Tuesday, at least 25 were injured and at least 50 had to be rescued by helicopters.

Those numbers could increase when the search is deepened and expanded Wednesday, with a major search-and-rescue team arriving from nearby Los Angeles County and help from the Coast Guard and National Guard along with law enforcement.

They’ll focus first on finding survivors.

“Right now our assets are focused on determining if anyone is still alive in any of those structures that have been damaged,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said.

The sheriff said “at least several dozen homes that have been either destroyed or severely damaged, and likely many other ones are in areas that are as-yet inaccessible.”

He said it’s likely they’ll find more people amid that destruction.

The search for the missing – whose numbers are uncertain – will continue through the night and then intensify after daylight Wednesday, authorities said.

Most deaths were believed to have occurred in Montecito, said Santa Barbara County spokesman David Villalobos.

The wealthy enclave of about 9,000 people northwest of Los Angeles is home to such celebrities as Oprah Winfrey, Rob Lowe and Ellen DeGeneres,

Winfrey’s home survived the storm and slides. In an Instagram post she shared photos of the deep mud in her backyard and video of rescue helicopters hovering over her house.

“What a day!” Winfrey said. “Praying for our community again in Santa Barbara.”

A mud-caked 14-year-old girl was among the dozens rescued on the ground Tuesday. She was pulled from a collapsed Montecito home where she had been trapped for hours.

“I thought I was dead for a minute there,” the dazed girl could be heard saying on video posted by KNBC-TV before she was taken away on a stretcher.

Twenty people were hospitalized and four were described as “severely critical” by Dr. Brett Wilson of Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.

The mud was unleashed in the dead of night by flash flooding in the steep, fire-scarred Santa Ynez Mountains. Burned-over zones are especially susceptible to destructive mudslides because scorched earth doesn’t absorb water well and the land is easily eroded when there are no shrubs.

The torrent arrived suddenly and with a sound some likened to a freight train as water carrying rocks and trees washed away cars and trashed homes.

Thomas Tighe said he stepped outside his Montecito home in the middle of the night and heard “a deep rumbling, an ominous sound I knew was… boulders moving as the mud was rising.”

Two cars were missing from his driveway and he watched two others slowly move sideways down the middle of the street “in a river of mud.”

In daylight, Tighe was shocked to see a body pinned by muck against his neighbor’s home. He wasn’t sure who it was.

Authorities had been bracing for the possibility of catastrophic flooding because of heavy rain in the forecast for the first time in 10 months.

Evacuations were ordered beneath recently burned areas of Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties. But only an estimated 10 to 15 percent of people in a mandatory evacuation area of Santa Barbara County heeded the warning, authorities said.

U.S. Highway 101, the link connecting Ventura and Santa Barbara, looked like a muddy river and was expected to be closed for two days.

The worst of the rainfall occurred in a 15-minute span starting at 3:30 a.m. Montecito got more than a half-inch in five minutes, while Carpinteria received nearly an inch in 15 minutes.

“All hell broke loose,” said Peter Hartmann, a dentist who moonlights as a news photographer for the local website Noozhawk. “Power lines were down, high-voltage power lines, the large aluminum poles to hold those were snapped in half. Water was flowing out of water mains and sheared-off fire hydrants.”

Hartmann watched rescuers revive a toddler pulled unresponsive from the muck.

“It was a freaky moment to see her just covered in mud,” he said.

Hartmann said he found a tennis trophy awarded in 1991 to a father-son team his wife knows.

“Both of them were caught in the flood. Son’s in the hospital, dad hasn’t been found yet,” he said, declining to name them.

The first confirmed death was Roy Rohter, a former real estate broker who founded St. Augustine Academy in Ventura. The Catholic school’s headmaster, Michael Van Hecke, announced the death and said Rohter’s wife was injured by the mudslide.

Montecito is beneath the scar left by a wildfire that erupted Dec. 4 and became the largest ever recorded in California. It spread over more than 440 square miles (1,140 square kilometers) and destroyed 1,063 homes and other structures. It continues to smolder deep in the wilderness.
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Under pressure from U.S. lawmakers, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will convene an accountability review board to probe the health attacks on 24 American diplomatic personnel in Cuba. At a Senate hearing Tuesday, State Department officials defended their response to the mysterious attacks, but admitted they still do not know who is responsible or what methods were used to hurt U.S. diplomats. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
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