It’s time to put focus back on the Americas
The Senate recently passed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), a remarkable bipartisan achievement in our polarized times, that modernizes NAFTA for the 21st century.
This agreement, encompassing cross-border trade, intellectual property rights, digital rules, small business promotion and energy, further integrates the economies of North America. However, before official Washington moves onto the next drama, I hope we reflect on the achievement — and then build on it by re-embracing America’s role throughout the Western Hemisphere.
The United States uses agreements like USMCA to ensure close international relationships, while building our economy. The completion of NAFTA in 1994 cemented Mexico as a close ally and partner of the United States.
While there are security problems along the border relating to criminal drug cartels, imagine how much worse the problem would be if American security personnel were not deeply integrated within Mexico. Now, with the implementation of USMCA, it’s time to renew American leadership in the Americas.
USMCA is an agreement to retain the trilateral free trade in North America among the United States, Canada and Mexico. In constructing and joining the USMCA pact, the United States has created a more stable business environment allowing for greater foreign investment and business collaboration across borders. In fact, research has shown that increased trade is an important way to bring allies into closer alignment on unrelated issues.
USMCA was a return to bipartisanship in foreign and economic policy. Promoting economic growth at home while drawing closer relationships with partners used to be a core value of America’s long-term consensus on national security.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer should be commended for developing a plan that allowed ad-hoc congressional committees to consider and discuss each aspect of the USMCA deal — allowing skeptics to have voices heard, while also allowing swing-vote members the opportunity to determine what they would need to pass the bill.
This process could help reforge a bipartisan consensus on foreign policy.
Additionally, we should credit the Mexican government for increasing its ambition and funding toward labor rights and enforcement. Members of Congress needed assurance Mexico will be able to enforce strict labor rights it agreed to in USMCA.
This bipartisan, cross-border dialogue is a model for how to embed American values throughout the hemisphere.
The USMCA should become a model for how to sustain economic growth while building closer American partnerships in North America. The partnerships that the United States has built through other trade agreements, like the counties in the Dominican Republic– Central America Free
Trade Agreement and the bilateral agreements with Colombia, Peru, Chile and Panama should be a starting point for further integration with U.S. values.
As turmoil and partisanship ticks ever higher in Congress, passage of USMCA makes clear that Congress, as a co-equal branch of government, can take the lead on legislation that would support our economy and our security.
Free-trade and American prosperity are not partisan issues, and the lessons from passage of USMCA should provide a model for rebuilding the bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Congress.