Republicans are accusing Democrats of changing their demands related to President Trump’s United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade as the deal gets closer to passage.
“Every time the Trump administration meets the speaker halfway, she tries to move the goalposts another 10 yards,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday.
McConnell made his comments the day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed hopes for a quick vote on the USMCA. The announcement walked back a statement by Pelosi last week that a vote on the trade deal, which would replace the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement, was “imminent.” Pelosi made the statement following a meeting with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, a critic of the deal.
A lot of Republicans see the Democrats as moving the goalposts, said a Senate GOP aide. “We really don’t know what’s happening behind closed doors, but contrast what Pelosi was saying before she met with Trumka with what she said after, and it can’t help but feel that way,” the aide said.
House Democrats and Trump administration officials have been negotiating for months to create a compromise version of the USMCA deal. Time to complete the deal this year is rapidly running out, with a two-week window in the beginning of December likely being the last opportunity.
Democratic leadership has the votes to pass the USMCA but is holding off on a vote, Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar told the Washington Examiner this week. “Do we have the votes to get it done? Yes, we do. Right now,” he said. “But leadership is trying to get a broader support of the caucus.”
Many Democrats are reportedly waiting on the labor movement to signal that it is OK to vote for the deal. Trumka, leader of the nation’s largest labor federation, has pushed back against reports that a deal is near. “If we can get Richard Trumka to agree with the labor enforcement mechanisms … I think that would go a longer way toward securing support on a cross-caucus basis,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, told reporters Tuesday.
Pelosi and Neal said in a joint statement, “We can reach an agreement on USMCA when the Trade Representative makes the new NAFTA agreement enforceable for America’s workers.” The statement did not specify what was needed to make the deal enforceable. Earlier this year, Mexico reformed its labor laws in order to comply with the terms of the USMCA. Last month, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador vowed in a letter to Democrats to enforce those labor reforms.
McConnell scoffed at the Democrats’ position. “How ironic. We’re talking about a trade deal that would create more American jobs, and Democrats are considering outsourcing their judgment to Big Labor special interests,” he said.
