President Donald Trump and top administration officials on Tuesday renewed pressure on Congress to ratify the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement, after a major U.S. labor leader said there was more work to do on the deal.
This story by Andrea Shalal originally appeared in Reuters.
The White House has dismissed House Democrats’ efforts to shore up enforcement of the trade agreement’s labor and environmental provisions, which are key union concerns, as purely political.
Trump accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Tuesday of being unable to get the bill “off her desk,” while claiming Democrats, unions and farmers were in favor. “She’s using USMCA, because she doesn’t have the impeachment votes,” the president said, without explanation.
Pelosi last week predicted a breakthrough in the talks was imminent. But she faces continued opposition from labor unions who felt burned by the $1 trillion North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that became law in 1993.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told union members in Maryland on Monday NAFTA had been “a disaster for working people,” with Maryland alone losing more than 70,000 manufacturing jobs.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Tuesday said the agreement included much tighter environmental provisions and worker protections than any previous U.S. trade agreement.
“We have no doubt that if Speaker Pelosi lets it come to the floor, it will pass overwhelmingly,” Ross told a talk radio program at the White House, part of a series of interviews the Trump administration organized on the trade deal.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said he planned to meet with House leadership to discuss USMCA this week. “Everything I’ve heard is positive,” he told reporters on a teleconference. “I think we’ll get this done before we celebrate Christmas.”
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal was also upbeat, telling reporters House Democrats had narrowed their differences with the Trump administration, adding, “We all have the end zone in sight.”
He said there were four or five issues that needed to be resolved with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, but it was critical to ratify the deal by the end of the year to help stabilize markets.