Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Foreign Affairs, hosts a lunch discussion with the first NAFTA negotiating team, including former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, in downtown Toronto, on Sept. 22, 2017.J.P. MOCZULSKI/The Globe and Mail
In the frantic final days of NAFTA renegotiations in September, 2018, a single sticking point threatened to derail more than $1-trillion of continental commerce.
Then-U.S. president Donald Trump’s trade chief wanted to do away with a dispute-resolution system that would enforce the terms of the agreement. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, knowing that without such a system the U.S. could run roughshod over Canada’s much smaller economy, refused to make a deal without one.
Enter Brian Mulroney. As part of a full-court press by the Trudeau government to break the logjam, the former prime minister quietly worked a back channel to the Trump administration. He made clear that dispute resolution had to be part of any pact or Canada would not sign. Finally, the Americans relented.
“It was high-stakes poker,” Gerald Butts, Mr. Trudeau’s principal secretary at the time, recounted in an interview. “Brian’s ability to explain to the Trump people the marquee role that the dispute-resolution mechanism played in creating NAFTA materially underlined the seriousness with which we were approaching the issue.”
Over the previous two years, the 18th prime minister had worked consistently to preserve the trade deal he had crafted three decades earlier. He briefed Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet and acted as a sounding board for Mr. Butts and Chrystia Freeland, then the foreign affairs minister.
Most crucially, he used his social contacts in the wealthy snowbird enclave of Palm Beach, Fla., to press the Americans at key moments, Mr. Butts said. In addition to Mr. Trump and his family, Mr. Mulroney’s connections included Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin, the U.S.’s then-commerce and treasury secretaries.
Such work was a fitting capstone to Mr. Mulroney’s political career. Throughout his time in office, he cultivated a close relationship between his country and the superpower next door. In addition to trade, his government worked with Washington on everything from fighting acid rain to the Persian Gulf war to managing the fallout from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Mr. Mulroney, 84, died Thursday in a Palm Beach hospital after a fall at his home.
U.S. President Joe Biden recalled working with Mr. Mulroney during Mr. Biden’s time on the Senate’s foreign relations committee. “I saw firsthand his commitment to the friendship between our two nations, as well as his abiding love for Canada and its people,” he said in a statement Friday.
From the time he took office in 1984, Mr. Mulroney hit it off with then-U.S. president Ronald Reagan, despite a 30-year age gap. “There was just this immediate reaction. Reagan made a notation in his diary about being impressed,” said Fred Ryan, a White House staffer at the time and now chairman of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.
The pair solidified their rapport at the Shamrock Summit in Quebec City in March of 1985, during which they celebrated their Irish ancestry by together singing When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. In 1987, they concluded a free-trade pact, in which Canada’s successful insistence on a dispute-resolution system was also the key sticking point.
They did not always agree: Mr. Mulroney famously imposed sanctions on apartheid South Africa over the disagreement of Mr. Reagan and other Western leaders.
Mr. Mulroney had an even closer relationship with George H. W. Bush, Mr. Reagan’s successor. On his first presidential visit to Canada, Mr. Bush agreed to Mr. Mulroney’s request for a treaty reducing acid-rain-causing emissions.
When the Berlin Wall fell in November of 1989, Mr. Mulroney played a key role in supporting Mr. Bush’s approach, recalled Andrew Card, then the White House deputy chief of staff. The pair’s goal was to support democratization in Europe without provoking violence by bragging about the West’s unfolding victory in the Cold War.
“Bush really treated Brian Mulroney as someone he could speak candidly to as a friend and as an adviser,” Mr. Card said.
During the lead-up to the Persian Gulf war, Mr. Mulroney hunkered down with Mr. Bush at the latter’s summer home in Kennebunkport, Me., to call world leaders and secure the votes for United Nations intervention.
The pair also negotiated the North American free-trade agreement, bringing Mexico into the continental commerce bloc.
Mr. Mulroney remained close with both Mr. Bush and Mr. Reagan for the rest of their lives, eulogizing them both at their funerals.
Ahead of the 2016 election, as Mr. Trudeau prepared for either a Trump or Hillary Clinton presidency, Mr. Mulroney offered advice on key players who would be close to Mr. Trump in the event he won, Mr. Butts said. Mr. Mulroney was the first to flag Robert Lighthizer, who ultimately became Mr. Trump’s trade chief, as someone the Trudeau government had to pay attention to.
After Mr. Trump came to power on a promise to tear up NAFTA, Mr. Mulroney sprung into action to defend his legacy. Part of his role was to help the Canadian side understand the thinking in Mr. Trump’s circle. Much of it was to persuade the White House of the deal’s value.
“He made a really important macro point about this being Ronald Reagan’s trade agreement,” Mr. Butts said, “and that Trump didn’t want to be on the wrong side of history.”