[CTC] Trump Team Is Split Over How Hard to Push North American Trade Deal

Tue May 28 07:20:48 PDT 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-team-is-split-over-how-hard-to-push-north-american-trade-deal-11558720716 <https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-team-is-split-over-how-hard-to-push-north-american-trade-deal-11558720716>

Trump Team Is Split Over How Hard to Push North American Trade Deal
By Michael C. Bender and Alex Leary
05/24/2019

WASHINGTON - President Trump wants Congress to quickly approve his trade deal with Canada and Mexico, but his own team is divided over how to force a reluctant Democratic-controlled House to act.

An increasingly personal clash between Mr. Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has raised questions about whether the two can collaborate on key legislation. The trade deal, the fate of which Ms. Pelosi controls in the House, is a priority of the business community.

Part of a private West Wing meeting on the trade deal Thursday was spent rehashing Mr. Trump's quarrels with Mrs. Pelosi. Vice President Mike Pence, senior adviser Jared Kushner, economic adviser Larry Kudlow, industry groups and corporate executives attended the meeting.

Mr. Pence in particular offered a play-by-play of the hostile Trump-Pelosi meeting over infrastructure on Wednesday, complained about media coverage and asked business leaders to pressure Democrats to halt their investigations into the president. 

"It surprised a lot of people," one participant in the meeting said. "It really wasn't the time or place to launch a defense of the president."

Democrats in Congress want changes to the trade deal, which is called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and time to work on them. But Mr. Pence's team and other senior advisers to the president are pushing to exert pressure by sending the accord to Congress and triggering a procedural countdown that would force a decision from the House. The strategy is designed to elevate the issue in the news and avoid pushing too far into the 2020 campaign season, which could make Democrats less willing to hand the president a victory.

Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative, is wary of the approach. He has privately reminded White House officials that the last time a Republican president asked a Democratic-controlled House to approve a trade deal-the Colombia Free Trade Agreement in 2008-it was killed. The speaker at the time: Mrs. Pelosi. Mr. Lighthizer is seeking common ground with Democrats and his efforts have won Mrs. Pelosi's respect.

The White House played down differences in the approach. The U.S. trade representative "is working closely with Congress and the speaker's office to advance the USMCA," spokesman Hogan Gidley said. "Ambassador Lighthizer and the vice president are on the same page and any suggestion to the contrary is completely false.”

The fissure was described by White House officials as a difference of opinion, and not marred by the infighting that has colored much of Mr. Trump's first few years in office. Yet it comes at a pivotal time for the president, who raised new doubts about Washington's ability to complete major legislation in the next 18 months when he said this week that he won't work with Democratic leaders while investigations of him continue.

Mr. Trump said on Thursday that part of the delay in congressional approval is that Mrs. Pelosi "does not understand the deal.”

"She's got to get up to snuff, learn the bill," he said, adding that Mr. Lighthizer was "being very nice to her, because she's a mess." Mrs. Pelosi hit back on Twitter: "When the "extremely stable genius" starts acting more presidential, I'll be happy to work with him on infrastructure, trade and other issues.”

Mr. Lighthizer has asked for two more weeks to negotiate with Mrs. Pelosi, Mr. Trump said, but he noted his patience is running out.

"I think that's a long time," he said Thursday.

If Congress doesn't move, the president may be inclined to follow through on his threat to simply withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement. He has argued that things "worked very well" before the accord went into effect in 1994.

But Mr. Trump is eager to deliver one of the central planks of his 2016 campaign: reworking Nafta. The White House has agreed to changes with Mexico and Canada, but it means nothing without congressional approval.

As Mr. Trump lashed out at Democrats for their investigations, the vice president was on a tour of crucial states-both for the nation's agriculture industry as well as for the president's reelection hopes-where he called on Congress to approve the reworked trade deal.

Mr. Pence's team is led by Marc Short, his chief of staff, who has experience working with Congress as Mr. Trump's first legislative-affairs director. Mr. Short and others want to apply pressure on Democrats in Republican-leaning and agriculture-heavy districts.

The White House attempted a similar strategy earlier this year during a partial government shutdown as part of a failed attempt to make Democrats submit to Mr. Trump's demands for more border-wall money. But there is a sense that, this time, more House Democrats want the trade deal approved. "We need Congress to approve the USMCA," Mr. Pence said Wednesday in North Carolina. "And we need Congress to approve the USMCA this summer.”

Mr. Lighthizer remains in regular contact with Mrs. Pelosi about her party's concerns over the pact. Mrs. Pelosi this month described him as fabulous and said he "cares about America's workers.”

Democrats say they want tougher enforcement on labor issues, and Mr. Lighthizer and his team are attempting to assuage those concerns with implementing legislation or other rule-making that would avoid having to reopen negotiations with Canada and Mexico. Mr. Pence is traveling to Ottawa next week to urge approval from the Canadian parliament.

Mr. Lighthizer, who was a deputy trade representative in the Reagan administration, is not keen on attempts to jam Mrs. Pelosi because of her decision in 2008 to thwart the Colombian free-trade agreement. The Bush administration at the time forced Mrs. Pelosi's hand, and she responded by adopting a rule that stopped the clock for expedited consideration of the deal.
The pact wasn't approved for another four years.

"When push comes to shove, you push back because you don't want to get pushed yourself," Mrs. Pelosi said in 2008 about her decision. "We're not going to get our workers pushed around.”

Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826

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