House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer said he thinks the House could be able to have a vote in the fall on the new NAFTA. Blumenauer, from Oregon and one of nine House Democrats who are tasked with negotiating changes to the deal with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, said he expects the group will meet with USTR "at least once a week." Speaking at a Washington International Trade Association event June 26, he joked that Lighthizer spends so much time meeting with House members and caucuses, "I think he travels the world just to get away from us." Lighthizer is on his way to Osaka, Japan, for the G-20 meeting. He met with the working group the afternoon before he left.
USMCA
The U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement is a free trade agreement between the three countries, also known as CUSMA in Canada and T-MEC in Mexico. Replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 2020, the agreement contains a unique sunset provision where, after six years (in 2026), any of the three parties may decide not to continue the agreement in its current form and begin a period of up to 10 years where USMCA provisions may be renegotiated.
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for June 17-21 in case they were missed.
House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., said after a June 25 hearing on Mexican labor reform that the Democrats asking for changes to the NAFTA rewrite are asking for changes that are "relatively narrow." "Our hope is we can move with dispatch, get our concerns resolved, strengthen the agreement and move forward," he said, adding that trade deal votes "never get easy, putting them off."
The day after the House working group had its first meeting to hammer out changes to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the renegotiated NAFTA, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., a freshman Democrat from a swing district, one Republican and 12 other Democrats introduced a bill that seeks to shorten the biologics exclusivity period in U.S. law to five years. The new NAFTA requires Mexico to raise its exclusivity period from five to 10 years, and Canada to raise its period from eight to 10 years. Current U.S. law is 12 years.
Trade groups that are lobbying House members to ratify the new NAFTA say they are trying to talk through concerns, and the National Association of Manufacturers' representative said she's seeing positive momentum.
Even on the U.S.-Mexico border, Congress members were not hearing much alarm from constituents when President Donald Trump was threatening to levy tariffs on all Mexican imports because he was unhappy with the volume of Central American migration. "They don't necessarily understand how that was going to impact them," said Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas. He'd tell them: "This is going to impact jobs, like Toyota in San Antonio."
President Donald Trump, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by his side, expressed optimism that the House of Representatives would approve the new NAFTA, and also implied that there will be no more national security tariffs levied on either neighbor. He said Mexico's president has "substantially slowed down" migration across Mexican territory. "It's already had a big impact," he said.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who's been working for months on a compromise bill to address national security tariffs, said that an introduction won't happen until after the August recess. "We're trying to get a consensus on [Section] 232s, that isn't the easiest thing," he said. "But we're making some progress." He said, speaking to reporters on June 19, that he'd had meetings on the bill that day.
The Mexican Senate voted to ratify the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on June 19, positioning Mexico to become first of the three countries to approve the renegotiated NAFTA. There have been some initial movements toward consideration of the deal by the U.S. Congress, and Canada is seen as likely following the U.S.'s lead before its legislature gets fully engaged (see 1906110040).
For weeks, Republicans in the House have been complaining that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn't moving fast enough to bring a vote to the floor on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. "USMCA is being held hostage by career politicians in Washington who are hell-bent on preventing President Trump from getting a win. A delay in approval of this agreement will hit the wallets of family farms in Illinois and across the country. The agriculture community is losing out because political gamesmanship is being placed in front of their interests," Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., wrote in an op-ed published June 18 in the Washington Examiner.