[CTC] Democrats Press Trump on Trade

[Arthur Stamoulis]

http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2017-01-03/on-trade-democrats-see-a-place-for-relevance-with-trump <http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2017-01-03/on-trade-democrats-see-a-place-for-relevance-with-trump>
Democrats Press Trump on Trade
On the first day of a new Congress, Democrats combine praise with pressure in approaching the president-elect.

By David Catanese <http://www.usnews.com/topics/author/david-catanese> | Senior Politics Writer Jan. 3, 2017, at 6:05 p.m.


House Democrats, relegated to the chamber's minority for a fourth consecutive Congress, are eyeing a drastic rewriting of the nation's trade policies as a potential area in which they can wield relevance in President-elect Donald Trump's new administration.

On the first day of the 115th Congress, a group of Democrats from a cross-section of the country signaled both an eagerness to partner with the incoming Republican president <http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-12-30/how-donald-trump-can-be-a-successful-president> to realize one of his most prominent campaign promises and a willingness to aggressively hold his feet to the fire if he fails to follow through.

"If he truly wants to revise U.S. trade policy, he is going to have to come and work in a bipartisan manner to do that. It's always been a substantial majority of Democrats who oppose these agreements," Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon said at press conference Tuesday on Capitol Hill, where he was joined by nine of his colleagues.

At the top of the group's wish list is the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, which Trump repeatedly blasted last year as "the worst trade deal in history." Negotiated under President George H.W. Bush and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, the trilateral agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada took effect in 1994 and was a favorite target of Trump, who ably linked his opponent, Hillary Clinton, to its problems.

Trump has pledged on his first day in office to begin the process of renegotiating NAFTA or withdrawing from it altogether, a proposition that sends chills down the spines of many pro-free trade Republicans but is being welcomed by a coalition of Democrats in the House, who even made it a point Tuesday to give Trump credit for properly reading the angst of their constituents.

"He understood what too many of us didn't, that fear and anxiety that was in workers' hearts about what was happening in trade agreements," said Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan, one of the pivotal blue states Trump flipped into the GOP column last fall. "We need to address that fear and that anxiety that was talked about all throughout the campaign. We do have to reopen NAFTA."

While NAFTA has previously enjoyed solid bipartisan backing, the 2016 presidential campaign saw candidates from both parties take it to task for contributing to the erosion of the U.S. manufacturing base and keeping wages stagnant. While its original intent was to create a vast new market for exports, critics say it led to an outsourcing of jobs and production, including to Mexico, where the cost of labor is significantly cheaper.

An announcement by Ford Motor Co. <http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/ford-cancels-mexico-plant-in-vote-of-confidence-for-donald-trump> on Tuesday that it will scrap a planned plant in Mexico and instead invest in a Michigan facility was cited as a direct reaction to a new president and may be a sign of the political capital Trump will hold with American corporations once he takes office.

A disparate approach to economic invigoration is also a way Trump could highlight his non-ideological appeal that helped sweep him into office.

"The momentum for a new direction on trade is very, very clear and very, very broad," said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, who accompanied Democrats at Tuesday's event. "While many of the president-elect's nominations signal an alarming anti-worker agenda, trade is an area where gains seem possible."

Many economists, though, still see NAFTA as benefiting the U.S. economy overall by lifting productivity and lowering consumer prices. There's little appetite among Republican leadership to make broad changes to the trade pact, but it's unclear how hard they will fight Trump if he pursues an overhaul. Trump's constant broadsides on the campaign trail against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, commonly known as the TPP, helped quash ratification of the 12-nation agreement this past fall, making it highly unlikely it will be resurrected in this Congress.

Under NAFTA's own rules, Trump arguably <http://abcnews.go.com/Business/trump-trade-president-elect-tear-tpp-nix-nafta/story?id=43467294> has the authority to unilaterally leave the treaty as long as he gives Canada and Mexico six months' notice. But that would be the most radical approach and produce an unknown impact on U.S. imports and exports, potentially sparking a trade war and a deeply divisive intraparty fight at home.

What's more likely is that Trump will attempt to rewrite the provisions of the deal to be more favorable to the U.S. Exactly how he'll do so has been left unspecified, but it won't be easy or swift.

Still, the president-elect sent a signal Tuesday that he's serious about a tougher approach on trade, naming Robert Lighthizer <http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2017-01-03/trump-expected-to-name-lawyer-lighthizer-as-top-trade-rep> his nominee for U.S. trade representative.

Lighthizer served as deputy U.S. trade representative under President Ronald Reagan and has been a harsh critic of China's trade practices, accusing the country of unfairly rigging the trade environment with its policies and warning the U.S. has been too complacent in its approach. In a statement put out by the Trump transition team, Lighthizer said he is "fully committed to President-elect Trump's mission to level the playing field for American workers."

On Monday, Trump took to Twitter <https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/816068355555815424> to lament China's "taking out massive amounts of money and wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade," an issue that will surely be a central part of Lighthizer's portfolio.

And while Democrats weren't ready to offer a full-throated endorsement of Lighthizer on Tuesday, they notably avoided criticism of him and expressed hope of working with Trump's nominee on shared goals.

"He's certainly cut from very different cloth than any other special trade representative in my 30 years here in Washington, D.C. Every one of them has been someone who is an adamant so-called free-trader. He's more of a pragmatist. He's not an ideologue like they are," DeFazio said.

But Democrats aren't naive. They know that even if Trump attempts to follow through on his stated intentions, he will face tremendous headwinds of resistance. Many of the specific trade-related provisions they are asking for – like stronger labor and environmental standards – might be ignored or outright opposed by Trump.

[READ: Would Donald Trump's China Tariffs Spark a Trade War? <http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-12-09/would-donald-trumps-china-tariffs-spark-a-trade-war>]

And this is where they see an opening to reverse their reputation as an inconsequential minority: If Trump rewrites NAFTA or decides to pursue bilateral trade agreements instead, he'll need details ratified by a Congress led by a hyperskeptical GOP majority.

"President Trump will need . . . the help of Democrats, who fought the TPP, in order to move forward with his trade agenda," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut.

It's sometimes forgotten that nearly a decade ago, soon-to-be President-elect Barack Obama made a similar, if less central, campaign promise: to renegotiate NAFTA "immediately," though that pledge fell to the dustbin as other domestic priorities boiled up.

What's more, Obama also became the country's most prominent cheerleader for the TPP, which many liberal critics viewed as a continuation of a giveaway to foreign countries in the name of globalism and at the expense of the American worker.

Even so, Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who cast one of the original votes against NAFTA, appeared ready Tuesday to give Trump the benefit of the doubt on an issue that defined his campaign.

"It appears to me the president-elect wants to be hands-on on the trade issue," Kaptur said. "We want to help him."
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