U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told lawmakers Wednesday that the U.S. economy would suffer enormously if Congress doesn’t ratify President Trump’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade.
The White House’s top trade negotiator said that not only would the deal’s failure disrupt trade with neighboring countries, but it would also damage trade on other fronts by signaling that the U.S. could not be counted on to follow through with the deals it negotiates.
“Right now, we are going to have a catastrophe if this doesn’t pass. You are not going to have labor enforcement. There are tens of millions of jobs at stake,” Lighthizer told the House Ways and Means Committee Wednesday. “It is going to have a bad effect with respect to our relations with China and everyone else if we are in a position where we literally cannot pass this agreement. What does that say about our resolve to have a fair trading system?”
He made the comments in reaction to questions about whether the deal’s labor provisions could be changed enough to address concerns by Democrats that have held up a vote on the deal. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has said she will not bring the deal up for a vote unless the enforcement provisions are strengthened.
The deal is currently in Canada and Mexico’s respective legislatures and is expected to pass in both.
Lighthizer said several times during the hearing that the administration would not agree to reopening USMCA negotiations to address Democrats’ concerns. He argued that it was too late in the process, and that both Canada and Mexico are opposed to changes as well. He said that he would work with lawmakers to ensure that the legislation’s implementing language, the one part of the deal that can still be written, would address those concerns.
He further argued that even if the USMCA deal was rewritten that wouldn’t necessarily ensure that the Democrats’ demands were addressed. “I don’t want to fool anybody. In the final analysis, enforcement is about people. And if you have people that don’t want enforcement, and the Ways and Means Committee doesn’t force people to enforce it, it won’t get enforced,” he said.
