Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Congress have said that unless changes are made, they’ll oppose President Trump’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade when it comes before Congress for a vote next year. But just because they agree on something doesn’t mean they’ll be able to work together.
Congressional staffers say that even among those opposed to USMCA, any sort of united front across party lines appears not to be in consideration. “There are senators on the other side with similar views to my boss, but I am not aware of any effort to form an ad-hoc coalition,” said one Senate staffer.
Lawmakers like Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., have criticized the USMCA deal from the left, while lawmakers on the right, such as Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., have raised major concerns.
But if they don’t like the deal as it stands, that doesn’t mean they agree on what it should be changed to, said another Senate staffer. Without that, there’s no point to trying to work together.
Democrats have scorned the deal as too similar to the North American Free Trade Agreement, the 1993 deal it would replace, while Republicans decry the deal’s protectionist measures, such rules for factory wages and loosening investor dispute settlement protections.
“The two sides want different things,” said the staffer.
That’s good news for the White House. While the opposition might be broad, it is also fractured.
Trump has upped the pressure on Congress by threatening to formally pull out of the NAFTA prior to USMCA’s passage, giving lawmakers the choice of either approving the replacement deal or leaving the U.S. without any deal.
Major trade associations like the Chamber of Commerce and the American Farm Bureau Federation have announced they’ll push for USMCA’s passage too, despite their earlier reservations regarding the deal.
It’s likely many resistant lawmakers can be swayed. While many have been critical of USMCA, few have come out and said they are dead-set on opposing it. Lawmakers argue that a lot depends on the deal’s implementing language, the one means by which Congress can still alter it. While Rubio declared the deal “unacceptable” in a tweet late last month, he was careful to say that this was “as currently drafted.”
House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was noncommittal last week on whether Democrats would take it up next year. “This bill has good features to it, but it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have enforcement,” she said. “Enforcement in terms of the labor provisions. Enforcement in terms of the environmental provisions.”
Warren, one of the few to pledge to vote against USMCA, has called on Trump to reopen negotiations with Mexico and Canada instead.
Some of the calls for changes to USMCA have been bluntly partisan. A November letter to Trump by Toomey and 10 other GOP senators urged a vote in the lame duck Congress in order to prevent congressional Democrats from having more leverage over the writing of the implementing language. “[W]e stand ready to assist in helping you secure a pathway to Congressional consideration,” the senators said.
