President Trump on Tuesday defended the name of his deal to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he has dubbed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
“The USMCA. Like YMCA or United States Marine Corps with an ‘A’ at the end. I liked the way it sounded. I didn’t want to use the name NAFTA because NAFTA has been so bad for us,” Trump said during a speech in Philadelphia.
{mosads}Trump is embarking on an effort to sell the deal, saying it will “revitalize the American auto industry” and prevent U.S. jobs from going overseas.
But the self-described branding expert could face an uphill battle in getting the new name for the quarter-century-old agreement to stick.
Kevin Hassett, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, called the pact “new NAFTA” during a Tuesday interview with CNN before correcting himself to say “USMCA.”
During a Monday news conference, Trump predicted the new moniker will be “the name that 99 percent of the time that we’ll be hearing.”
“It sort of, just, works. USMCA.” he said.