Working Group Members Say USTR May Have Final Edits to USMCA Next Week

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., who leads the working group negotiating with the U.S. trade representative over the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, said he anticipates that USTR Robert Lighthizer will send over text of the changes to the agreement next week. Neal said he spoke with Lighthizer Nov. 14, to tell him he'd be forwarding “a series of, we think, could be make-or-break issues, and that we hoped that he would digest them and then respond to us, fast."

Neal said it's quite possible to get the deal voted on before the end of the year. "The differences we have are not huge, but it is enforcement. That's the key." The working group members and other House Democrats said in interviews at the Capitol the day after all Democratic House members were invited to talk about USMCA. At that meeting on Nov. 14, a number of members said they are impatient for a vote.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., a free-trade advocate, said, "Members are looking forward to getting this done as soon as we possibly can. Members thought it was tremendously important that while everything else is going on, we get something done." He was referring to the impeachment inquiry, and he said he agrees. Many of those who spoke are from swing districts, he said, and many of those members are the reason the Democrats now control the House majority. "A lot of them [were] freshmen from these districts that are important, and they were impressive talking about the significance of this," he said.

Working group member Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., one of the more left-leaning appointees, complained, "We've had a lot of hints about what is in [the edited USMCA], and we've never seen any language on paper." Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat who has voted against seven free trade deals in her 20 years in Congress, said she hopes the USTR will send over the language next week.

Schakowsky complained that some who are arguing for a quick vote are thinking about their re-election rather than how significant the vote is. She said she told Democrats in the meeting that "we're not there yet, but we can get there. The other message I really wanted to convey to members, especially some of the new members [is] this is not any old vote. This is a legacy vote. This is a career vote. There are still people today seething over NAFTA and the jobs that they lost, and the problems it caused for their communities. And so this vote will be a long-lasting vote, and they need to consider it that way. That it's not for just this session, or this re-election cycle, or something that can be amended and changed in a year."

Schakowsky said there's a growing campaign to pass USMCA now. "There's some pressure being put on members from the outside, from the Chamber of Commerce, from interested parties that want this just to be done," she said.

Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., did not urge for a vote in the caucus meeting, but said "a number of us feel strongly while we obviously want a good deal, we want something better than what the president negotiated, we need to do everything we can to get to yes. From what I've heard from folks, I'm optimistic that that's possible. That we can end up with something that allows the president to say he negotiated a better NAFTA, and allows us to say we took what he negotiated and made it even better."

Meeks said, "Leadership has taken a position that we're not going to give up the good for the sake of the perfect. In a negotiation, you may not get everything that you want. That's not a negotiation if you have the ability to get everything that you want. But if you get the majority, or a substantial amount of what you want, you cut a deal. And that's what I hope and think that's where we're headed."

One of the moving pieces is how Labor leaders will respond to what Democrats negotiate. Will they argue that they gave up too much? Will they advocate for passage? Or will they put out a disappointed statement but not rally members to oppose ratification? Neal said he has not talked to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, but that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has, and he will be talking to him next week. Schakowsky said labor's position is "a top consideration," but she said she thinks they could be satisfied. "I think they want an agreement," she said.