Revised North American Trade Pact Passes House – The New York Times, The New York Times

“President Trump is keeping his promise to replace the failed NAFTA with a far better trade agreement,” Mr. Lighthizer said in a statement. “Thanks to his leadership and the work of Republicans and Democrats in Congress, the U.S. M.C.A. represents the gold standard in U.S. trade policy and will be the template for U.S. trade agreements going forward. ”

(************************“ We really have offered a new construct for trade , ”Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in an interview. “To get to negotiate a hemispheric trade agreement – some would say, ‘I think it’s the biggest trade agreement in American history’ – so yeah, it’s pretty good.”The more than 2, (0-page agreement**************** (required over two years) of difficult talks among the Trump administration, lawmakers, Mexican and Canadian officials, business executives and other interest groups. Much of it simply updates the original NAFTA, adding revised guidelines for food safety, e-commerce, anticorruption and online data flows. But it also contains a variety of changes to try to discourage the kind of outsourcing for which Mr. Trump and Democrats blame the original NAFTA.

That includes higher thresholds for how much of a car must be made in North America to qualify for zero tariffs. It rolls back a special system of arbitration for corporationsthat Democrats and Republicans have criticized, and also includes provisions meant to help identify and prevent labor violations, especially in Mexico.The swath of Democratic support was bolstered by the endorsement of powerful labor voices, including the AFL-CIO – which has not endorsed a trade agreement in years – and the Teamsters.Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut and a prominent advocate for labor, wrote a two-page letter to her colleagues outlining her motivation for support, deeming the final product to be one that “is not a model moving forward, but establishes important principles we can build from.” Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois and one of Ms . Pelosi’s chosen negotiators, voted for a trade deal for the first time in more than two decades of tenure in Congress. “On balance – it’s worthy of a yes,” Ms. Schakowsky said in an interview before the vote. “I would never sign off on something that the unions said no to. That was a big deal. ”

. Lighthizer was on hand for the House vote, shaking hands and chatting with some of the lawmakers who were part of the Democratic negotiating group. “I felt to my bones that this was an opportunity we couldn’t pass by, ”said Representative Jimmy Gomez, Democrat of California, who was one of the negotiations.

The implementing legislation for the trade pact will now head to the Senate, though Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky , the majority leader, has said he will wait to hold a vote until the conclusion of an impeachment trial. While Republicans in the upper chamber have chafed at being left out of the final wrangling over language, the measure is expected to pass and head to Mr. Trump’s desk.“I don’t think the Senate should just quietly agree to be jammed in this process, ”Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, acknowledging that his“ irritation with the process ”would probably not prompt him to vote against the deal.Lighthizer has said that his goal was to write a new kind of trade agreement that could win the support of a majorityof both Democrats and Republicans. Through the last two years of negotiations, he consulted with Democrats, labor unions and progressive groups to find common ground between their objectives and those of the Trump administration, as well as Canada and Mexico.But Democrats would not support the agreement until they had secured critical changes to labor, environmental and enforcement provisions. And after regaining the majority in January, House Democrats knew they had substantial leverage.Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who has not supported a trade agreement in 25 years but will vote for the USMCA, said Democrats were able to win strict labor standards by holding out their support until the Trump administration agreed in recent weeks to include them. He cast that as a victory for unions and for workers.“The importance to this is that workers are not just at the table, but have real power, ”Mr. Brown said, “which has never happened before in a trade deal.”House Republicans, who have hammered their Democratic counterparts for not immediately rushing the agreement text to the floor after it was signed more than a year ago, mostly celebrated the agreement in speeches on the House floor.**************

“Today’s vote in the House is a monumental step as America’s farmers, manufacturers and Main Street businesses come one step closer to a st century trade deal, ”Representative Frank D. Lucas, Republican of Oklahoma, said in a statement.Business groups and companies welcomed the deal’s passage, as well as an end to years of uncertainty about the fate of a trade pact that governs commerce across North America.Christopher Padilla, the vice president of government and regulatory affairs at IBM, said the agreement had “the strongest digital trade provisions of any agreement negotiated to date. It sets a new global standard. ”(************************“ The Senate should act swiftly, ” Jay Timmons, the president and chief executive of the National Association of Manufacturers President, said in a statement. “Manufacturers have waited long enough, and passage of the U.S.M.C.A. will help restore trade certainty and empower our industry, the backbone of the America economy, to continue growing here in the United States. ”

Not everyone was pleased by the final agreement. The Pass USMCA coalition, which represented a range of industries including pharmaceuticals, withdrew its support for the measure after months of lobbying for its passage.

Free traders have also panned the deal, which aims to encourage North American manufacturing by raising barriers to products made outside the continent. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a nonprofit public policy organization that advocates limited government, announced that the new agreement’s “trade-unrelated provisions and political giveaways set precedents that could harm future trade agreements for decades to come.” In an analysis this week, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the changes would cost automakers and consumers an additional $ 3 billion over the next decade because fewer imports would qualify for duty-free treatment under the new pact.

Some labor unions, including the United Autoworkers and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, (****************************************

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********************************************** also withheld their support , saying that the deal would not make enough progress in helping American workers.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union also “expressed serious concerns about the deal , ”Arguing that it did not require strong country-of-origin labeling needed to strengthen food safety. “Without strong country-of-origin labeling, consumers will be kept in the dark and America’s food workers will continue to face unfair competition from foreign companies not playing by the same rules, ”said Marc Perrone, the union’s president, who acknowledged that some improvements had been made to the labor and enforcement provisions in the measure.********************************************
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