TRUMP SET TO KILL OLD NAFTA DEAL FOR USMCA.
Trump to kill old NAFTA to push Congress to approve USMCA
The original NAFTA deal is back on top of Donald Trump’s hit list, with the U.S. president declaring he intends to terminate the 24-year-old trade pact - a move designed to pressure lawmakers on Capitol Hill to approve its recently negotiated successor. Trump, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto signed the new U.S.-CanadaMexico Agreement - USMCA, although the federal government in Ottawa has rechristened it CUSMA - during an awkward ceremony at the outset of G20 meetings Friday in Argentina. Trump was on board Air Force One on his way back to Washington late Saturday when he announced that he would notify Congress of his intention to terminate NAFTA, a long-threatened move that would give lawmakers six months to approve its replacement once formal notice is delivered.
“I will be formally terminating NAFTA shortly,” the president said. “Congress will have a choice of the USMCA or pre-NAFTA, which worked very well. You got out, you negotiate your deals. It worked very well.”
A number of Democrats in Congress, empowered by their new majority in the House of Representatives, say they don’t like the new agreement in its current form, warning it will require more stringent enforcement mechanisms for new labour rules and protections for the environment in order to win their support. Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and one of more than a dozen names believed to be eyeing a presidential run in 2020, has added her name to the list of lawmakers who say they won’t support the new agreement in its current form.
“As it’s currently written, Trump’s deal won’t stop the serious and ongoing harm NAFTA causes for American workers. It won’t stop outsourcing, it won’t raise wages, and it won’t create jobs. It’s NAFTA 2.0,” Warren told a luncheon audience last week during a foreign policy speech in Washington.
She cited a lack of enforcement tools for labour standards, drug company “handouts” and a lack of sufficiently robust measures to cut pollution or combat climate change, particularly in Mexico. “For these reasons, I oppose NAFTA 2.0, and will vote against it in the Senate unless President Trump reopens the agreement and produces a better deal for America’s working families.”