[CTC] Blumenauer: No more meetings planned for NAFTA working group

[Arthur Stamoulis]

Politico Pro
 
Blumenauer: No more meetings planned for USMCA working group
By Adam Behsudi 
11/20/2019

A senior Democratic lawmaker signaled that an effort to get a House vote on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement has fully shifted to the level of leadership as rank-and-file members will no longer meet to address areas of Democratic concern.
 
“To the best of my knowledge, there are no more working group meetings scheduled, but there are activities underway with the speaker and Chairman [Richard] Neal,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), chairman of the Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee, told reporters Wednesday.
 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi organized a nine-member working group early in the summer to hash out issues with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. The group was tasked with addressing what Democrats saw as shortcomings in USMCA’s provisions on labor, environment, pharmaceuticals and general enforcement.
 
Backers of the deal have been pushing for a vote in the House before the end of the year, but the pace of negotiations with Congress has slowed as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka expressed skepticism this week that the administration will fully enforce labor commitments made by Mexico.
 
Pelosi is unlikely to move ahead with a vote on the trade deal until the AFL-CIO labor group, an important Democratic ally, takes at least a neutral position on the agreement.
 
Many lawmakers also remain skeptical that the administration will make new labor provisions it has agreed to with Democrats fully enforceable under the rules of the agreement. That includes a new process for inspecting whether Mexican factories are compliant with USMCA labor provisions.
 
“I will say, as one who has been involved in this, there’s a lot of work going into trying to get that right,” Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) said at a Wednesday trade hearing on the recent U.S.-Japan deal. “It’s better to get it right and take a couple of extra months than to get it wrong and deal with what we’ve dealt with in our last 25 years.”
 
Moderate freshman Democrats from more politically mixed districts have stepped up efforts to get Pelosi to move the agreement to a vote. A group of those lawmakers expressed skepticism about any movement on the deal before the end of 2019 after a meeting with Trumka this week.
 
Neal, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, has stayed positive about a potential vote on the deal this year. But on Tuesday, Pelosi and Neal issued a brief joint statement indicating Lighthizer needs to agree to changes to make the labor provisions enforceable for a vote to occur.
 
“As somebody who’s been involved with some of these discussions, there’s been a lot of hard work to make the agreement better, which I think will be revealed as we’re able to have fruition of this,” Blumenauer said at the same hearing. “We’ve made clear for months things at least the majority of this committee is concerned with in terms of environment, pharmaceuticals, enforcement, which has been sorely lacking.”

Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826




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