Trade Subcommittee Chairman Says USMCA Could Be Ratified in Fall

House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer said he thinks the House could be able to have a vote in the fall on the new NAFTA. Blumenauer, from Oregon and one of nine House Democrats who are tasked with negotiating changes to the deal with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, said he expects the group will meet with USTR "at least once a week." Speaking at a Washington International Trade Association event June 26, he joked that Lighthizer spends so much time meeting with House members and caucuses, "I think he travels the world just to get away from us." Lighthizer is on his way to Osaka, Japan, for the G-20 meeting. He met with the working group the afternoon before he left.

Blumenauer said that Lighthizer is "eager to get past the hand-holding," and is serious about getting the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, as the new NAFTA is known, ratified in Congress. "This is a legacy issue for him," Blumenauer said.

While many Republicans in the House are complaining of delay, saying there are enough votes now to pass the deal, Blumenauer said the House will not take a vote to have the new NAFTA pass with nearly all Republican votes and 25 Democrats. But, he said, he's confident that changes on enforcement, biologics, labor and the environment can be made that will garner dozens of Democratic votes. He said with reasonable changes to the pact, he thinks a majority of Democrats could vote yes.

"I think we’ve already made a lot of progress," he said.

On labor issues, Blumenauer praised Mexico's new labor law, but said that the scale of the changes over the next four years is daunting. "The Mexican government has some resource constraints. Just practically, [reviewing] 125,000 agreements every year for four years? We’ve got some capacity building, and some trust building to make sure it, in fact, happens."

Blumenauer said the current unions, which are entwined with corporations, are powerful and entrenched. "It’s not going to be easy for the Mexican government to deliver on this," he said. But he said the United States could help with capacity building, and he said, "I think that’s appropriate, given the stakes."

Blumenauer also addressed other trade issues, including China, Section 232 tariffs and Japan trade talks.

Generally, he said tariffs are taxes on Americans, and that they distort the market. "I am troubled by the drive-by tariff policy of this administration," he said.

On China, he said China has been a bad actor on intellectual property, and uses techniques that give its companies unfair advantages. "I don’t want to come out of this frustration, all of the pain inflicted, all the disruption with the tariff policies, without resolving any underlying problems and just have a purchase order, which could well happen," he said.

When moderator Steve Lamar, an American Apparel and Footwear Association executive, asked him what he thought of how the administration has handled exclusions, Blumenauer said the agency officials can't resolve questions that companies have and it's taking too long. "I hear from manufacturers at home, they’re ... trying to get an exclusion, a big steel company no longer objects, so why haven’t they been able to get a clear path forward?"

Lamar asked if the administration is spending enough money to hire people to handle the volume expected for List 3 exclusions. "If they don’t, then they ought to reconsider the stupid policy! If they can’t implement it, then stop it. Don’t make a fool of them and don’t torture people in businesses who are just trying to comply with things to them that seem to be nonsensical," Blumenauer said, his voice rising.

Lamar asked Blumenauer if it's time to rework Section 232 or emergency powers to make it harder for the chief executive to unilaterally raise tariffs on national security grounds. Blumenauer said that "it's past time" to consider that, and said that "statutory guard rails" should get bipartisan support. But when asked when such legislation might move, he said he's focused on getting fixes to the new NAFTA.