Trump is about to find out that trade is no easier than healthcare.     25 plus years of supply channel, distribution channel, and assembly have guaranteed that any tweaks will not be easy or automatic "wins" for the U.S.    

To the first two posters - the author did qualify his example by prefacing it as "an extreme hypothetical".     But I think that his overall point is correct - this "dumbing down" of the issue by the Trump Administration does not guarantee a win for the U.S. and ignores the fact that U.S. auto manufacturers have tuned their operations with current NAFTA rules as their guide.   Undoing or tweaking this would take a fairly large effort with no guaranteed benefits for anybody - least of all, the U.S.