Trump celebrates major rewrite of North American trade rules
WASHINGTON » President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed into law a major rewrite of the rules of trade with Canada and Mexico, celebrating the fulfillment of one of his top campaign promises while declining to share the moment with Democratic lawmakers whose support was essential to getting it over the finish line.
Trump said renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement was “probably the No. 1 reason that I decided to lead this crazy life that I’m leading right now.”
“Today, we’re finally ending the NAFTA nightmare,” Trump said in a ceremony on the South Lawn. The event featured hundreds of business and farm leaders from around the country and scores of Republican officials. No Democratic members of Congress
were on the White House guest list.
Trade experts say the impact of the new U.S.Mexico-Canada Agreement will be modest. Canada and Mexico already represent the top two export markets for U.S. goods. The independent U.S. International
Trade Commission last year calculated that the deal would add 0.35%, or $68 billion, to economic growth and generate 176,000 jobs over six years. That’s not much of a change for a $22 trillion economy with 152 million nonfarm jobs.
“It’s a blip,” said Syracuse University economist Mary Lovely, who studies trade. “The main thing is what it isn’t: It isn’t a continuation of uncertainty, and it isn’t a major disruption” to business.
The new pact, along with the signing of a “phase one” agreement with China, dials down trade tensions that have contributed to slowing economic growth globally.
It also gave the president a chance to at least briefly shift the focus in Washington, where Trump’s impeachment trial has occupied center stage for weeks.
“I keep my promises and I’m fighting for the American worker,” Trump said.
Still, Trump couldn’t resist making a few indirect references to impeachment in his remarks. He noted, for example, that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was headed back to the Capitol to ask questions at the trial.
“He’s got some beauties, I’ll bet,” Trump said.
The leaders of the U.S., Canada and Mexico signed the deal in late 2018. But it still faced a long road to ratification. Legislation implementing it received overwhelming, bipartisan support in Congress after several months of behind-the-scenes negotiations between Democratic lawmakers and the Trump administration.
Trump made a point of praising Republican legislators for their work in passing the deal. He singled out one Republican lawmaker after another during the ceremony, those from farm states, those from battleground states in tight reelection races, and of course, GOP leadership.
Trump did not mention the role of Democrats, but they said that even if they weren’t at the signing ceremony, their influence was being felt.
“What the president will be signing is quite different from what the president sent us,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DCalif. “We were able to make vast improvements. If we weren’t, we would not have been able to pass the bill.”
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, chairman of a House trade panel, said inviting Democratic lawmakers to the ceremony would have underscored the inadequacies of the president’s initial agreement and the fact that Democrats made the agreement possible.
“It’s a clear illustration of how Trump operates — with division, hyper-partisanship, and childishness.” said Blumenauer, D-Ore.
The White House did not immediately respond to a question about whether any Democrats were invited to the ceremony.
NAFTA, which took effect in 1994 under President Bill Clinton, tore down trade barriers between the three North American countries and commerce between them surged. But Trump and other critics said NAFTA encouraged factories to leave the United States and relocate south of the border to take advantage of low-wage Mexican labor.