Great news for American workers! The Trump administration and House Democrats have reached an agreement in principle on modest modifications to the United States, Mexico and Canada Agreement (“USMCA”), opening the way to enacting the president’s signature trade deal.
It’s unquestionably a win for the president but, more importantly, as Speaker Pelosi stated, its “a victory for American workers.”
I predict that the USMCA will pass and become law. Then, more Americas will find good-paying jobs and our economy will grow by tens of billions of dollars.
The U.S., Mexico and Canada reached an agreement 15 months ago. Even in our jubilation that this agreement will pass, we could reasonably ask why it took the Democrats — with the support of their union allies – 15 months to allow a vote.
Could it be due to the Democrats’ reluctance (intransigence?) to do anything that might benefit President Trump even if it also clearly benefits the American people?
Perhaps we had to wait for the Speaker to become more concerned with avoiding claims of heading a “do nothing” Congress than with giving the president a win.
We could question if Monday’s announcement is intended to defray attention from a politically disastrous impeachment effort and a damaging IG report on FBI misconduct. Or, we could ask if the Speaker calculated that handing the president a major win on the same day Democrats announce their impeachment charges against him was the best way to limit coverage of his well-deserved victory on trade.
Clearly, the delay was not due to meaningful or unresolvable problems with the USMCA itself. The USMCA will replace NAFTA, the nearly quarter-of-a-century old agreement candidate Trump called “the worst trade deal ever” during the 2016 campaign. It was also an agreement Big Labor criticized from its inception as detrimental to the interests of American workers.
Read the rest at: USMCA
