Time is rapidly running out to get President Trump’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade passed through Congress and it may already be too late get a vote this year, Republicans are warning.
Proponents fear that getting a vote next year could be tougher because of the elections, imperiling the trade deal.
“The calendar is just really tight already, plus impeachment, which could delay things further. So this year is just looking really unlikely,” said a top Senate Republican aide who requested anonymity to speak freely. “Then in January, we’re a month away from Iowa caucus voting. That’s the presidential campaign in full swing. Sure, Congress can pass laws any time. But big legislation is less likely in a presidential election year, especially when we’re near or during primary voting.”
In a Senate floor speech Wednesday, Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa said that a USMCA vote was “increasingly unlikely” this year.
White House officials have lashed out at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the bill’s dimming prospects this year. “There’s one real sticking point, that’s Nancy Pelosi. She fiddles while the USMCA’s in the deep freeze,” White House trade policy adviser Peter Navarro said Thursday on Fox Business. “This thing’s ready to go, put on the floor.”
The White House negotiated USMCA, which would replace the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement, last year and has been pushing Congress to approve it all year. Pelosi has repeatedly said that Democrats “want to get to ‘yes,'” but have concerns over certain provisions, including enforcement of its labor, environmental, and drug-pricing provisions.
USMCA has to be approved according to the rules set by Trade Promotion Authority, the law covering submitting deals to Congress. One of TPA’s provisions is that a deal’s “implementing language,” the section explaining its specifics and how it would be enforced, has to be submitted to Congress on a day that both the Senate and the House are in session. While the Senate remains in session until Nov. 22, the House is scheduled to recess at the end of October. That leaves a week left to pass USMCA this month.
The House goes back in session on Nov. 11, creating another two-week window in which USMCA could pass before the Senate recesses for Thanksgiving. The House and the Senate are both scheduled to also be in session for the first two weeks of December. Passage of the deal in October no longer appears possible, the Senate GOP aide said, so it’s down to the two-week periods in November and December. Even then, it could have to compete for floor time with an impeachment trial.
There’s no technical reason why Congress couldn’t still pass USMCA next year since that would still be the 116th Congress. The White House would not have to start the TPA process all over again. But 2020 is an election year, which are notoriously hard times to pass major legislation. So administration officials have been keen to get it done this year.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has regularly been meeting with House Democrats to address their concerns, and last week Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador vowed in writing to pursue the labor reforms that House Democrats are demanding. Democrats nevertheless say that issues remain and have not set up a vote.
“I understand several of my colleagues are urging for an immediate vote on the president’s new NAFTA,” Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said Wednesday on the Senate floor. “Setting aside the fact that there have not yet been the hearings or markups necessary to allow that to happen, it would be a major mistake for this administration to seek a vote on a trade deal until it is a good deal.”
Navarro disputed that any major issues remain unresolved. “The false narrative here is this whole issue about labor enforcement. That problem’s effectively been solved.”
