[CTC] DeLauro Remarks on Press Call Ahead of New NAFTA Signing at White House

[Arthur Stamoulis]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                         <>
January 29, 2020

 
DeLauro Remarks on Press Call Ahead of New NAFTA Signing at White House
(As delivered)
 
DeLauro’s statement on House passage of the renegotiated NAFTA can be found here <https://delauro.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/delauro-statement-renegotiated-nafta-agreement>.
 
 
Thank you for joining today’s call, as the president signs the re-negotiated North American Free Trade Agreement into law. 
 
I am joined by my Democratic colleagues: Congressman Earl Blumenauer, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici, and Congressman Joe Morelle. I will introduce them each in just a moment.
 
We are here to discuss the changes that House Democrats won in the renegotiated NAFTA. Any celebration the president is making today is a celebration of what Democrats were able to secure for working people and the planet. The President has not delivered on his trade promises—to stop outsourcing, rebuild American manufacturing, and end the trade deficit.
 
It is thanks to the hard work of the people on this call, the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, and the commitment of the Democratic Party to working people and middle-class families, that we secured positive changes on labor standards, environmental standards, enforcement, and access to medicines.
 
And, for my remarks today, I want to talk more about those things we secured as well as to discuss what we were not able to secure despite our best efforts. But, to start, I want to talk about what this agreement represents moving forward.
 
It is important to note: the re-negotiated NAFTA is a floor, not a template. The deeply flawed NAFTA agreement that the president signed in November of 2018 enshrined the failed status quo that had hurt American workers, while extending monopoly protections for pharmaceutical companies that would lock in high medicine prices. So, our victory was a victory of reducing harm: both from the original NAFTA and the president’s original re-negotiated NAFTA.
 
With this, we set the floor for trade agreements. It must be said that the era of our trade agreements that include egregious giveaways to corporations is over. That much has been made clear by the large and bipartisan majority that supported this agreement, that supported largely eliminating the ISDS, or Investor-State Dispute Settlement, regime, and rejecting the president’s attempted giveaway to pharmaceutical companies that would have locked in high drug prices. This new floor we are setting with the re-negotiated NAFTA says our trade policies must at a minimum put working people and the planet first, with enforceable labor and environmental standards. Out trade agreements can no longer be giveaways to corporate investors.
 
We must continue to build on the progress we made, especially as we look towards upcoming agreements, potentially, with the UK or the EU. Because we did secure wins for working people in this agreement.
 
As part of our negotiations with the administration, we were focused on: Crafting effective and meaningful standards to protect labor rights; Constructing an enforcement mechanism for the U.S. and Mexico; strengthening and protecting environmental standards; And, protecting access to affordable medicines.
 
And, our gains include: a labor specific enforcement mechanism for new labor standards; a review body to ensure Mexico is meeting its obligations; penalties for goods and services not produced in compliance; and, robust resources for monitoring and enforcement.
 
But, despite our best efforts, the re-negotiated NAFTA does not include everything we wanted. It lacks more robust climate standards, labor and environmental terms, and protections for food and product safety.
 
And, any future trade agreement must include binding climate standards, stronger labor and environmental terms, and truly enforceable currency disciplines, and exclude limits on consumer protections for food and product safety, the service sector, ecommerce, and more.
 
So, as the president signs the re-negotiated NAFTA into law, I pledge to continue working with my colleagues to deal with the important issues relating to globalization and trade policy that we are facing today, to ensure that we continue to build on the floor we set—for oversight, implementation, and crafting what we believe future trade agreements should look like.
 
The work continues, as it must.
 
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delauro.house.gov <http://www.delauro.house.gov/>
 

Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826




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