As another round of negotiations to review a North American free-trade deal wraps up in Washington this week, lawmakers are growing more vocal in defense of the deal, and anxious about its future.<\/p>\n
President Trump has said he\u2019s not sure<\/a> whether he will renew the six-year-old United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. While many view the president\u2019s threats as a negotiating tactic, they are still causing concern among members of Congress whose districts depend on the agreement.<\/p>\n The United States and Mexico are negotiating in earnest, trading proposals in Washington this week about cars, agriculture and other topics. But Canada did not join the negotiations, raising questions about how any changes would be translated to a three-party agreement. The Trump administration has at times threatened to jettison Canada entirely<\/a>.<\/p>\n Representative Linda T. S\u00e1nchez of California, the top Democrat on a House trade panel, said in an interview that she was a \u201cbig proponent\u201d of maintaining the trilateral structure of U.S.M.C.A.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m concerned that the Trump administration is going to abandon that and do these bilateral, like M.O.U.s, which don\u2019t have the full effect of Congress,\u201d she said, comparing Mr. Trump\u2019s trade deals to informal memorandums of understanding.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump negotiated U.S.M.C.A.<\/a> in his first term to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he called one of the worst deals ever. U.S.M.C.A. wrapped in priorities of both Republicans and Democrats, and its \u201cimplementation act\u201d passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2020.<\/p>\n Since then, Mr. Trump and his advisers have grown more critical of the pact, seeing it as responsible for trade deficits with Canada and Mexico, America\u2019s biggest trading partners.<\/p>\n Under the terms of the agreement, the three countries promised to review the deal by July 1 of this year. During negotiations in Mexico last month, the United States proposed changes to the pact\u2019s rules for metals, cars and other goods, including raising the requirement for how much local materials cars need to be made with to be exempt from tariffs.<\/p>\n U.S.M.C.A. requires cars to source 75 percent of their content by value from North America to qualify for tariff-free treatment. The Trump administration would raise that threshold to 82 percent, while requiring 50 percent of a car\u2019s content to come from the United States, people familiar with the proposals said. The United States is also proposing expanding those requirements to new types of car parts and setting new content requirements for other industries, including electronics.<\/p>\n In an interview on Thursday, Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, said talks this week with Mexican officials had been positive, and included discussions of how to revive the global electronics supply chain in the United States and Mexico, while keeping the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico down.<\/p>\n \u201cWe certainly want more U.S. content, but to the extent we\u2019re going to be importing these other things, we want to have them as close to home as possible,\u201d he said of the electronics industry.<\/p>\n Mr. Greer has talked about the importance of keeping parts of U.S.M.C.A. intact, but the president has lately seemed far more critical. In France on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said the United States would \u201cdo better without\u201d the pact.<\/p>\n \u201cI would rather not have the agreement, but I may sign it,\u201d Mr. Trump said. \u201cWe do better as a country if we don\u2019t have an agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S.M.C.A. and its predecessor, NAFTA, have always been somewhat divisive politically, but the three countries are carrying out negotiations over U.S.M.C.A.\u2019s future at a sensitive political moment, as midterms loom and Mr. Trump\u2019s economy is on the ballot.<\/p>\n While some parties, like the United Automobile Workers union or Florida tomato growers, have intense criticisms of the pact, it has many defenders. The deal\u2019s future is particularly important for states that export farm goods, as well as those on U.S. borders that are economically integrated with Canada or Mexico.<\/p>\n In a hearing this month held by the House Committee on Agriculture, Representative Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania, the committee\u2019s Republican chairman, said the agreement had proved \u201cextremely beneficial\u201d to farmers, ranchers, consumers \u201cand the economy as a whole.\u201d But he conceded that it had provisions that could be improved.<\/p>\n Democrats are urging changes that they say would benefit workers and the environment. Ms. S\u00e1nchez led nearly 20 Democrats in a letter<\/a> urging Mr. Greer to negotiate provisions that would target threats to economic security, strengthen workers\u2019 rights and add new environmental protections.<\/p>\n Ms. S\u00e1nchez\u2019s district is particularly affected by trade because it is close to the Port of Los Angeles. After a public forum in a Los Angeles suburb, a small-business owner told her that he had to close his business because of Mr. Trump\u2019s tariffs. She said she was unsatisfied with the administration\u2019s engagement on U.S.M.C.A., and she blamed her Republican colleagues for ceding power to the president on trade.<\/p>\n \u201cThe administration doesn\u2019t seem particularly interested in involving Congress in these trade negotiations,\u201d Ms. S\u00e1nchez said.<\/p>\n Republicans have an even trickier calculus. Many come from states that are major exporters, but they also face potential political peril for standing up to the president\u2019s trade agenda. Since Mr. Trump\u2019s return to office, Republicans in Congress have repeatedly<\/a> moved<\/a> to try to block<\/a> votes challenging tariffs.<\/p>\n Many Republicans have tried to walk a line of voicing support for U.S.M.C.A. while saying it has room for improvements.<\/p>\n \u201cA renewed U.S.M.C.A. really, I think, can hold our neighbors accountable, and then work for our own ag producers and our manufacturers,\u201d Representative Adrian Smith of Nebraska, the top Republican on a House trade panel, said in an interview. \u201cRight now, our role is to elevate the profile of the policy and the issue itself, given its importance to our economy,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Mr. Smith said he was \u201cnot a fan of tariffs\u201d but had come around to some of the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to open up foreign markets to American business. His constituents\u2019 reactions to Mr. Trump\u2019s tariffs are \u201cmixed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Sidelined from the negotiations, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have penned letter<\/a> after<\/a> letter<\/a>, held briefings with experts and traveled to Mexico City during talks last month to make their priorities heard.<\/p>\n The administration is also sparring with some lawmakers about the role Congress will play in the pact\u2019s approval. Mr. Greer said Thursday that he would seek Congress\u2019s approval if the revised pact made changes to U.S. law, but that the changes were more likely to affect Canada and Mexico than the United States.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t really have to change our laws to get better terms of trade with Canada and Mexico,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need Canada and Mexico to change the way that they\u2019re treating our country.\u201d<\/p>\n The Constitution delegates trade as the legislative branch\u2019s responsibility. But the bill that Congress passed to enact U.S.M.C.A. gives the executive branch the power to modify certain rules, though some say the changes the administration is pushing for go beyond the scope Congress intended.<\/p>\n Mr. Smith said he could imagine \u201ca path that would mean that Congress wouldn\u2019t necessarily need to vote on it again.\u201d But Democrats, including Ms. S\u00e1nchez, say Mr. Trump should submit the agreement for a congressional vote.<\/p>\n Lawmakers of both parties have also argued that, even if the administration doesn\u2019t need them to approve its changes, Mr. Trump should turn to Congress if he wants his policies to be long-lasting. Otherwise, the next president could unwind them.<\/p>\n Greta M. Peisch, a trade lawyer who served in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative under the Biden administration, said there was a \u201cbright line\u201d legally dictating that Congress must have a role when U.S. law was changed or if the United States entered into a new trade agreement.<\/p>\n But if U.S.M.C.A. is modified without requiring changes to the law, it isn\u2019t precisely clear what Congress\u2019s role ought to be. That, she said, is \u201ca really big gray area.\u201d<\/p>\n Tony Romm contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As another round of negotiations to review a North American free-trade deal wraps up in Washington this week,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,6796,8855,6780,8856,28157,388,6777,28,30,6779,8857,3123],"class_list":["post-95203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-donald-j","tag-greer","tag-international-trade-and-world-market","tag-jamieson-l","tag-law-and-legislation","tag-mexico","tag-politics-and-government","tag-trump","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-international-relations","tag-united-states-politics-and-government","tag-united-states-mexico-canada-agreement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}