Pence pushes trade pact in area visit
Vice president speaks at Uline Inc. warehouse
The vice president, in Pleasant Prairie, touts reasons Congress should approve the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement.
In a speech that both prodded Democrats in Congress and appealed for bipartisanship, Vice President Mike Pence pushed Wednesday for passage of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
“Let’s go get the USMCA done, and get it done this year,” Pence told a crowd of nearly 700 gathered inside one of the vast Kenosha County warehouses of Uline Inc. and warmed up by a prespeech playlist that included the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You,” and the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.”
The pact would update the North American Free Trade Agreement — NAFTA — that took effect in 1994. NAFTA paved the way for increased trade among the U.S., Canada and Mexico, but critics say it has cost U.S. jobs — 700,000 of them, according to a study cited by America First Policies, which sponsored Wednesday’s event.
The successor trade agreement has been approved by leaders of the three countries but is awaiting a vote in Congress.
Pence said the deal would create more than 175,000 jobs, including more than 50,000 in manufacturing.
He touted the benefits to Wisconsin, including increased dairy exports that President Donald Trump negotiated in what Pence, tongue in cheek, called “his typically subtle way.”
“This president stood strong and fought hard for dairy and got a win in the USMCA,” Pence said.
Wisconsin, he said, exported more than $22 billion in goods to Canada and Mexico last year, supporting more than 100,000 jobs.
“Do the math everybody,” Pence declared. “The USMCA is a win for Wisconsin and a win for America.”
He said the trade deal is “still sitting there on the Democrat speaker of the House’s desk” while Democrats “are spending their time on endless investigations” — likely a reference to the ongoing impeachment inquiry directed at Trump.
“The American people want Congress
to go to work and then they want Congress to pass the USMCA,” Pence said.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said the House Democrats have been working on the trade deal even as the impeachment inquiry is ongoing and are on “a path to yes.”
At the same time he took shots at Pelosi and her party, Pence also declared the trade pact to be “bigger than politics” and expressed confidence that it would pass with bipartisan
support once it got to the House floor.
“The USMCA would be great for Wisconsin, it would be great for America,” Pence said. “In these divided times, I think it also shows the world that we can still get important things done that benefit all of the American people.”
While advocates describe the trade agreement as a better deal than NAFTA, Brookings Institution fellow Geoffrey Gertz has said the new pact “looks remarkably similar” to the agreement it would replace.
“The main structure of the deal is largely intact,” Gertz wrote in an analysis last October.
Among the biggest changes, he wrote, were higher rules-of-origin requirements in the automobile industry and “marginally greater U.S. access to the Canadian dairy market.”
The rules-of-origin requirements provide greater incentives to source goods and materials in the United States, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has said.
Gertz said by email Wednesday that he believes his analysis in general still holds.
As Pence declared that Trump’s policies have strengthened the economy and employment, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin issued a statement decrying what they called a “lineage of broken promises” to working people. Trump’s tax cuts “will ultimately cost middle-class families in the long run” and his trade policies have hurt companies such as Harley-Davidson, the Democrats said.
America First Policies, which staged the Uline event, is a super PAC supporting Trump’s initiatives.
Uline is a major shipping and packaging supplies distributor that moved its headquarters from Illinois to Pleasant Prairie several years ago. The company employs 6,500 people, including 2,700 in Kenosha County, a spokesman said.
Pence on Wednesday said Uline’s annual sales total more than $2 billion, and that both revenue and profits are up.
The firm is run by major Republican and conservative-cause donors Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein.
Richard Uihlein gave more than $37 million to political committees in 2017-’18, records of the Federal Election Commission show.
Pence has made other trips to rally support for passage of the trade deal, including a stop in Eau Claire in May and a visit earlier this month to Iowa.