Former Sen. Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat, will join the lobbying push to advance President Trump’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade through Congress. She’ll be a spokeswoman for an ad hoc group called Farmers for Free Trade.
“Congressional approval of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is a top priority for our nation’s agriculture industry and I’m pleased to have the opportunity to join the voice of America’s farmers on the importance of North American trade,” Lincoln said in a statement Wednesday.
Lincoln had a 16-year career in Congress, including six years in the Senate, that ended in 2011. She was a chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee in her final two years. “During a period of declined farm income and uncertainty due to the trade war, I am especially glad to join the fight in rebuilding bipartisan support for trade,” Lincoln said.
Farmers for Free Trade is a coalition group of agricultural trade associations, such as the American Farm Bureau Federation and the American Soybean Association. Its other spokesmen include former Sens. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, and Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat and former U.S. ambassador to China.
The USMCA deal, which would replace the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement, is awaiting approval by the legislatures of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, but progress has been slow on all three fronts.
In Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has yet to schedule a vote and has said the U.S. should reopen negotiations on the deal in order to firm up its enforcement provisions, a move that the U.S., Canada, and Mexico all oppose. Several lawmakers are demanding that the U.S. restore exemptions Canada and Mexico had regarding the Trump administration’s steel and aluminum tariffs before they will vote for USMCA’s approval, arguing the tariffs are harming the U.S. economy as well. The White House has said allowing any exemptions undermines the point of the tariffs.
