The Trump administration and House Democrats reached an agreement on the United States-Mexico-Canada trade deal, a top Democrat said on Dec. 10.
Speaking ahead of a press conference on the deal, House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) told reporters in Washington: “We got the agreement.”
“We’re going to go with it,” he said.
Neal and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) were holding a press briefing on the deal, known as USMCA, around 10 a.m. on Tuesday—about an hour after House Democrats announced two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump.
Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on Dec. 10 that Canadian and U.S. government representatives will arrive in Mexico to sign the agreement later Tuesday.
Pelosi said Monday night that she wasn’t worried about giving Trump a “victory.”
“There are those who I read about in one place or another that say, ‘why would you give President Trump a victory?’” Pelosi said at a Wall Street Journal event for corporate executives. “Well, why wouldn’t we? This is the right thing to do for our trade situation, for our workers.”
USMCA will replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which helped devastate manufacturing across wide swaths of the United States because it encouraged factories to move south of the border, capitalize on low-wage Mexican workers and ship products back to the U.S. duty-free.
The original NAFTA badly divided Democrats but the new pact is more protectionist and labor-friendly, and Pelosi is confident it won’t divide the party, though some liberal activists took to social media to carp at the agreement.
“You don’t have to have unanimity, you just have to have consensus.” Pelosi said. “Once we go down that path we’ll be OK.”
“She worked to try and make sure people are making it better, make sure there aren’t people spun up,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), calling the new accord “a better end result.”
Pelosi, a longtime free-trade advocate who supported the original NAFTA in 1994, had given mixed messages on the deal, telling reporters on Nov. 14 that an agreement was “imminent” but later saying it probably wouldn’t be passed by the end of the year. She said that stronger worker protections needed to be negotiated, among other matters.
The announcement came one day after Richard Trumka, president of The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO), said that a deal was reached between Democrats and the White House and his union was reviewing it. The AFL-CIO is strongly linked to leading Democrats.
America’s great USMCA Trade Bill is looking good. It will be the best and most important trade deal ever made by the USA. Good for everybody – Farmers, Manufacturers, Energy, Unions – tremendous support. Importantly, we will finally end our Country’s worst Trade Deal, NAFTA!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 10 december 2019
Trump said on Twitter Tuesday morning that the USMCA was “looking good.”
“It will be the best and most important trade deal ever made by the USA. Good for everybody—Farmers, Manufacturers, Energy, Unions—tremendous support. Importantly, we will finally end our Country’s worst Trade Deal, NAFTA!” he said.
In another missive, he wrote: “Looking like very good Democrat support for USMCA. That would be great for our Country!”
At the White House on Monday, Trump said he was hearing good things about the negotiations.
“I’m hearing from unions and others that it’s looking good. And I hope they put it up to a vote. And if they put it up to a vote, it’s going to pass. A lot of Democrats want to pass it too. And we look forward to that. But I’m hearing they’re doing very well,” he said.
“It’s replacing probably the worst trade deal ever made, which was NAFTA. And this is one of the best trade deals ever made for our country.”
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times
