The White House will give Congress the full text of its bilateral trade agreement with Mexico on Friday evening, the first step toward getting Congress to approve it.
The deal will be submitted even though the administration has so far been unable to get Canada to reach a new trade deal of its own. Canada’s absence will likely make obtaining congressional approval harder, due to lawmakers’ fears that it could disrupt the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The Trump administration is under pressure to get the deal approved quickly. Oct. 1 is the deadline for submitting the text under the terms of the Trade Promotion Authority law, which is why the White House is about to submit it, according to several press reports.
Any later and the deal would have to be renegotiated with Mexico’s incoming president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist. “We don’t know where that would go at all,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Tuesday.
A month of continuous meetings between U.S. and Canadian negotiators failed to secure an agreement. A clearly frustrated President Trump indicated Wednesday that talks had completely broken down.
“We’re not getting along at all with their negotiators,” he said, claiming to have rejected an offer to meet one-on-one with Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The prime minister’s office said that no such request was made.
The White House has long maintained that Canada’s approval is not necessary, but pursued it anyway in order to calm lawmakers’ fears. Officials hope the introduction of the text will spur Canada to make a last-minute deal.
Bryan Riley, trade policy director for the National Taxpayer’s Union, called it an “immense failure” that that administration couldn’t get Canada on board.
“Lowering trade barriers with our neighbors should be the overarching goal of the Trump administration’s NAFTA renegotiations,” he said. “Any new NAFTA deal with Mexico that does not involve Canada should be rejected.”
The U.S.-Mexico deal alters the so-called “rules of origin” under NAFTA by setting at 75 percent the amount of North American-made parts needed for a car or truck to be duty-free under NAFTA, up from 62.5 percent. It also requires that at least 40 percent of all auto content be made by workers making at least $16 an hour or its equivalent.
An agreement with Canada has been held up over issue involving its use of dairy price supports and concern over the the U.S.-Mexico deal’s impact on Chapter 19 of NAFTA, which involves settling disputes over levies and anti-dumping rules. Maintaining the provision was a key concern for Canada. The U.S.-Mexico deal scraps it.
