[CTC] NAFTA 2.0 more valuable than ITC report likely to show, U.S. business leader says

[Arthur Stamoulis]

Politico Pro

USMCA more valuable than ITC report likely to show, U.S. business leader says

By Doug Palmer 
04/18/2019 11:00 AM EDT

A long-awaited analysis of President Donald Trump's new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico is likely to show that the pact will provide only a small boost to the U.S. economy, but the agreement's real value will be much higher than that, a top executive at the Business Roundtable said today. 

"One of things we expect from the [International Trade Commission] report just by nature of the way they do their work is they will rank the USMCA as not having a significant positive economic impact," Tom Linebarger, chair of the business group's international trade subcommittee, said in an interview. 

That's mainly because the ITC's economic model mainly looks at changes in tariffs, and most tariffs between Canada and Mexico were already eliminated under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

But there are many improvements to NAFTA in the new agreement that are less easy to model, Linebarger said. Those include stronger intellectual property protections, new e-commerce provisions and openings in the services market, he said.

Linebarger, who is also CEO of Cummins, an engine manufacturer, said he has heard from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that they expect the ITC to release the report today.

Winning approval of the new trade agreement is "a gigantic priority" for the business group, despite concerns BRT members have expressed about certain U.S. proposals during the negotiations.

At this point, "there's no debate in the BRT as to whether the USMCA is a good thing or not a good thing," Linebarger said, noting that USTR compromised on most of its most controversial ideas. But the more stringent auto rules of origin that USTR negotiated is a "weird" provision to include an agreement that is supposed to liberalize trade among the three neighbors, he said.



Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826




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