Thread: Trump tells Congress to ratify trade deal before dealing with infrastructure

Trump tells Congress to ratify trade deal before dealing with infrastructure

Eric Beech, David Shepardson
May 21, 2019 / 7:31 PM / a day ago
4 Min Read

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump told Democratic leaders on Tuesday to pass the United States-Mexico-Canada trade pact before working on an infrastructure bill, a sign that crumbling roads and bridges are unlikely to get significant federal funding for repairs this year.

Trump’s letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer comes before a scheduled meeting at the White House on Wednesday where Democrats were expected to detail how they would like to spend $2 trillion on infrastructure improvements.

Tensions are rising between the Republican president and Democrats who on Tuesday subpoenaed two more former White House aides in connection with a House committee’s probe of whether the president obstructed Robert Mueller’s inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

“Before we get to infrastructure, it is my strong view that Congress should first pass the important and popular USMCA trade deal,” Trump wrote.

Trump’s administration negotiated a trade pact to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, but has yet to get Congress to approve it.

Last week, his administration announced it would remove U.S. tariffs on Canadian and Mexican steel and aluminum, a major hurdle to the passage of the agreement, but a number of Democrats have expressed concerns about other parts of the deal.

“Once Congress has passed USMCA, we should turn our attention to a bipartisan infrastructure package,” Trump wrote.

Pelosi and Schumer said in a statement late on Tuesday they were looking forward to hearing the president’s plan on how to pay for an infrastructure package.

But they did not mention the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact or highlight specific infrastructure priorities.

Even before Trump’s letter, any infrastructure bill already faced a tough road to approval as the White House has not agreed to raise taxes or enact new taxes to fund repairs.

Trump waited until 2018 to outline an initial proposal that did not include new tax revenue. The proposal largely relied on private sector and state funding, and the plan was widely panned and never got a vote in the Republican-led Congress.

Trump met with Democratic lawmakers in April, where the group agreed to spend $2 trillion to repair and build the United States’ aging roads, bridges, power grids, water and broadband infrastructure, but did not develop a plan on how to pay for such a package.

Trump suggested that Congress should use the surface transportation bill as “the best vehicle to achieve our goals” on infrastructure.

The existing surface transportation law expires in September 2020 and Congress has added $140 billion from the general fund to make up for shortfalls in the highway trust fund over the last decade.

That September 2020 deadline makes it less likely Congress will act on infrastructure this year, two administration officials said Tuesday.

Trump’s letter said congressional Democrats canceled a scheduled meeting of their aides, “preventing them from advancing our discussions. Nevertheless, I remain committed to passing an infrastructure bill.”

Reporting by Eric Beech and David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by David Alexander and Lisa Shumaker

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKCN1SR2NI

So there's lots of things in play here. Passing USMCA should be a top priority for Congress. If this passes and starts going into action it will raise wages in Mexico which might and should reduce economic based illegal immigration into the United States. Either way, we need NAFTA to go bye bye and die and bring in this new trade deal as soon as possible. I don't understand why Democrats would be slow-walking it. Maybe it just takes a long time for them to review the document, maybe they're actually reading it, I doubt it, but maybe, or probably they just want to continue to hurt our country, economy and workers.

The President and his Trade Team have done their job, it's time for Congress to do theirs.

Democratic leaders slow-walk Trump USMCA trade deal despite concessions

by Sean Higgins
May 22, 2019 12:00 AM

Splits within the Democratic caucus are restraining any momentum to force a House vote on President Trump's U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade.

The White House, Canada, and Mexico have all acted in recent weeks to address various lawmakers' demands, but some Democrats are insisting on further changes. As a consequence, there hasn't been an increase in pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to schedule a vote.

A House Democratic staffer said that Democrats from heavily agricultural districts were inclined to support a vote, while ones from strong union districts were leaning against it. “We’ve got our own tug-of-war inside the caucus on this,” the staffer said.
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Democrats are trying to iron out those differences, but they are making progress only slowly, Rep. Jim Acosta, D-Calif., told the Washington Examiner. “I would like to see a vote before the August break, but there are still some issues that need to be addressed," Acosta said.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has been meeting with the speaker and other House Democrats to discuss their holdups. Acosta, a centrist, pro-trade Democrat, said that he'd met Lighthizer five times in two months.

The outstanding issues dividing Democrats are ensuring that Mexico abides by changes to its labor laws and keeping prices for pharmaceuticals in check.

The Trump administration addressed one major congressional hang-up about the deal Friday by exempting Canada and Mexico from tariffs on steel and aluminum. Canada and Mexico responded on Monday by removing the tariffs that they had enacted on U.S. products last year in retaliation. Many lawmakers had balked at holding a vote on USMCA until the tariffs, which they argued were doing more harm than good to the U.S. economy, had been lifted.

Last month, Mexico ratified changes to its labor laws to bring them in line with what Democrats, including Pelosi, had demanded as part of the USMCA deal.

Those two changes were meant to boost USMCA's odds in Congress, especially in the Democrat-led House. But House Majority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters Tuesday that they were still not near a vote. “As you know, organized labor says it would like to get to yes, we say we'd like to get to yes," he said. "Mexico has acted but we need enforcement."

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Colin Peterson, D-Minn., who backs USMCA, said in a statement Friday following the removal of the metals tariffs that “I hope this means we can move toward trade deals that stop the harm to the rural economy and restore the export markets for our farmers and ranchers." He stopped short of calling for a vote.

The Democratic aide said that one issue holding up a vote is that the administration has yet to formally submit the USMCA deal to Congress. This has made it harder to put it on the speaker’s agenda. Under Trade Promotion Authority, the law covering congressional approval of trade deals, the House must vote within 60 days of a deal being submitted for it to be ratified. Trump could test Democrats' opposition to the deal by forcing the issue.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Pelosi had recently told Lighthizer that more time was needed to fix address the remaining issues. She agreed to assign lawmakers to working groups to work with Lighthizer to try to work through them.

Frustrated Republicans accused the speaker of slow-walking the trade deal. “Why is Speaker Pelosi holding this up? Let's do whats right for Hoosiers, and ALL Americans,” tweeted Rep. Greg Pence, R-Ind.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/p...te-concessions

So they wanted Mexico to finish their labor law changes and Trump's removal of the tariffs first. Well, okay, that's done. Time to submit it soon and start the 60 day clock on a vote. Time, money and jobs, they are a wasting!!