NAFTA is a ‘mixed’ disaster: Fmr. Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli
Former Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli on Tuesday said NAFTA is a “mixed” disaster and believes Trump is right to renegotiate the 24-year-old trade deal.
“It depends on your point of view and where you are in the supply chain on NAFTA,” he told FOX Business’ Liz Claman on “Countdown to the Closing Bell.”
U.S., Canada and Mexico are currently trying to renegotiate the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA), due to President Donald Trump’s threat to walk away from the agreement.
On Monday, the Trump administration announced that it will implement a 20% tariff on the first 1.2 million imported large residential washing machines.
“When I went to Home Depot (NYSE:HD), we were hardly in the appliance business. We had exclusive big-box distribution rights for LG state of the art technology, consumers loved it, [the] innovation, technology. Understand, for us it was good, for Whirlpool wesaw today with the tariff their stock went up,” he said.
The biggest issue under negotiation is the U.S.’s demand for more car parts to be sourced in North America. The Trump team is calling to raise the minimum content requirement for imported vehicles to 85% from 62%.
The former Chrysler chairman said over 50% of the car parts used by Chrysler were sourced from outside the country.
“If you think about even the seats that were assembled in the U.S., the material and a lot of the components underneath those, the sensors [and] the motors, all of those things were imported from various countries,” he said.
During the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that his country was trying to convince President Trump not to terminate NAFTA.
“We’re working very hard to make sure that our neighbor to the south recognizes how good NAFTA is and that it has benefited not just our economy, but his economy and the world economy,” Trudeau said.
Though Trudeau disagrees with Trump’s plan to leave, Nardelli, who also served as the CEO of Home Depot, agrees with the president’s position on NAFTA.
“I would be in favor of what [Trump is] doing. Again, his focus has been America first, returning jobs to the United States,” Nardelli said.