If the White House wants a new, renegotiated version of the North American Free Trade Agreement passed by Congress this year, it’s running out of time. Republicans on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are not sounding hopeful after House speaker Paul Ryan publicly urged U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer last week to deliver notice by May 17 of the administration’s intent to sign a renegotiated treaty with Mexico and Canada.
Ryan issued his deadline citing the Trade Promotion Authority statute, which requires Congress to be notified of possible trade agreements. The TPA law also required the administration to provide the text of the impending agreement within 30 days of the notice. “We need to receive the notice of intent to sign soon in order to pass it this year,” says Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong. “This is not a statutory deadline, but a timeline and calendar deadline.”
The talks among leaders of the three NAFTA signatories have stalled over several issues, including a dispute over how to resolve the agreement’s rules of origin for automobiles. The Trump administration is pushing to toughen these rules and restrict what products with inputs from non-NAFTA countries (such as foreign-made parts for cars assembled in the Mexico) get the benefits of the agreement’s tariff reduction. That would benefit American auto manufacturers, the thinking in the White House goes, but pushback from Mexico has brought trade negotiators to a stalemate.
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One More Thing—Congressional Republicans, who are generally supportive of NAFTA, may be hope to resist having a new deal to consider before the midterm elections. But forcing Trump’s hand to get a deal quickly could hasten something worse, from the GOP’s perspective, if negotiations fall apart: the president could simply try to withdraw from NAFTA, as he has threatened he is willing to do.
What, then, would Republicans in Congress do? Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey penned a strongly worded op-ed for the Wall Street Journal last week promising to “vote ‘no’ on a bad new deal and employ all legislative means to block a unilateral withdrawal.” It’s unclear if Toomey’s tack would find enough support in both houses of Congress.
Trump Tweet of the Day
The so-called leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media in order to make us look as bad as possible. With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2018
President Trump raised eyebrows Sunday morning when he tweeted he was working to provide sanctions relief to Chinese phone manufacturer ZTE, which the Commerce Department hit with a 7-year ban on American shipments of computer parts last month. “Too many jobs in China lost,” Trump wrote; “Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!” The announcement seemed to catch many in the White House off guard. Deputy press secretary Raj Shah struggled to explain Trump’s thinking to reporters Monday.
Asked why Trump would want to help a company that was sanctioned for doing business with North Korea and Iran and that has been flagged for counterespionage concerns, Shah demurred: “Obviously, this is part of a very complex relationship between the United States and China that involves economic issues, national security issues, and the like. And it’s an issue of high concern for China that’s been raised with the U.S. government and with our administration at various levels.”
After the briefing, Trump himself elaborated on his earlier position with another tweet, saying that ZTE “buys a big percentage of individual parts from U.S. companies” and that “this is also reflective of the larger trade deal we are negotiating with China and my personal relationship with President Xi.”
Must-Read of the Day—From BuzzFeed: “The 9 Minutes That Almost Changed America”
As a U.S. delegation gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the opening of America’s new embassy Monday, protesters clashed with Israeli troops at the Gaza border less than a hundred miles away. As they attempted to breach the fence, some Palestinian protesters brandished weapons and lobbed rocks and, the Israeli military said, explosives; soldiers returned with tear gas and rifle fire, killing 55, according to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry.
White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah called the deaths “tragic,” but said the responsibility for them “rests squarely with Hamas.”
“Hamas is intentionally and cynically provoking this response. And as the secretary of state said, Israel has the right to defend itself,” Shah said. Asked whether Israel ought to “rein it in,” Shah responded that “no, we think that we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Hamas is the one that, frankly, bears responsibility for the dire situation right now in Gaza.”
Leak Watch—On the website, Jack Goldsmith, a former Justice Department official under President George W. Bush, writes about the “Wikileaks-ization” of the American press. Goldsmith singles out the New York Times for its culture of inviting the leaks of classified or stolen material in its national security reporting:
Song of the Day—“Tuesday’s Gone” by Lynyrd Skynyrd
