As another round of negotiations to overhaul a North American free trade agreement wraps up in Washington this week, lawmakers are becoming more vocal in defense of the deal and worried about its future.
President Trump has said he is not sure whether he will renew the six-year-old US-Mexico-Canada agreement. While many view the president’s threats as a negotiating tactic, they still raise concerns among members of Congress whose districts depend on the deal.
The U.S. and Mexico are seriously negotiating trade proposals in Washington this week on autos, agriculture and other issues. But Canada did not participate in the talks, raising questions about how any changes would be translated into a tripartite agreement. The Trump administration has at times threatened to ditch Canada altogether.
Representative Linda T. Sánchez of California, the top Democrat on a House trade panel, said in an interview that she was a “big proponent” of maintaining the trilateral structure of the USMCA
“I’m concerned that the Trump administration will abandon that and make these bilateral, like MOUs, that don’t have the full effect of Congress,” she said, comparing Mr. Trump’s trade deals with informal memorandums of understanding.
Mr. Trump negotiated the USMCA in his first term to overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he called one of the worst deals ever. The USMCA wrapped in priorities from both Republicans and Democrats, and its “implementation bill” passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2020.
Since then, Mr. Trump and his advisers have become more critical of the pact, seeing it as responsible for trade deficits with Canada and Mexico, America’s biggest trading partners.
According to the terms of the agreement, the three countries promised to review the agreement by July 1 this year at the latest. During negotiations in Mexico last month, the United States proposed changes to the pact’s rules for metals, cars and other goods, including raising the requirement for how many local materials cars must be made with to be exempt from tariffs.
The USMCA requires cars to source 75 percent of their contents by value from North America to qualify for duty-free treatment. The Trump administration will raise that threshold to 82 percent, while requiring 50 percent of a car’s contents to come from the United States, people familiar with the proposals said. The US also proposes to extend these requirements to new types of auto parts and to impose new content requirements on other industries, including electronics.
In an interview Thursday, Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, said talks this week with Mexican officials had been positive and included discussions on how to revive the global electronics supply chain in the U.S. and Mexico while keeping the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico down.
“We definitely want more American content, but to the extent we’re going to import these other things, we want them as close to home as possible,” he said of the electronics industry.
Mr. Greer has spoken about the importance of keeping parts of the USMCA intact, but the president has recently seemed far more critical. In France, Mr Trump said on Wednesday that the US would be “better off without” the pact.
“I’d rather not have the agreement, but I can sign it,” said Mr. Trump. “We do better as a country if we don’t have an agreement.”
The USMCA and its predecessor, NAFTA, have always been politically divisive, but the three countries are negotiating the future of the USMCA at a sensitive political time, with the midterms looming and Mr. Trump’s economy on the mend.
While some parties, such as the United Automobile Workers union or the Florida tomato growers, have intense criticism of the pact, it has many defenders. The future of the agreement is especially important for states that export agricultural goods, as well as those on US borders that are economically integrated with Canada or Mexico.
In a hearing this month held by the House Committee on Agriculture, Representative Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania, the committee’s Republican chairman, said the deal had proved “extremely beneficial” to farmers, ranchers, consumers “and the economy as a whole.” But he admitted it had provisions that could be improved.
Democrats are calling for changes they say will benefit workers and the environment. Mrs. Sánchez led nearly 20 Democrats in a letter urging Mr. Greer to negotiate provisions that would target threats to economic security, strengthen workers’ rights and add new environmental protections.
Mrs. Sánchez’s district is particularly affected by trade because of its proximity to the Port of Los Angeles. After a public forum in a Los Angeles suburb, a small business owner told her he had to close his business because of Mr. Trump’s tariffs. She said she was unhappy with the administration’s commitment to the USMCA, and she accused her Republican colleagues of ceding power to the president on trade.
“The administration doesn’t seem particularly interested in involving Congress in these trade negotiations,” Ms. Sanchez.
Republicans have an even more difficult calculation. Many come from states that are big exporters, but they also face potential political danger for standing up to the president’s trade agenda. Since Mr. Since Trump’s return to office, Republicans in Congress have repeatedly tried to block votes challenging the tariffs.
Many Republicans have tried to toe the line by voicing support for the USMCA while saying there is room for improvement.
“A renewed USMCA, I think, can really hold our neighbors accountable and then work for our own ag producers and our producers,” Representative Adrian Smith of Nebraska, the top Republican on a House trade panel, said in an interview. “Right now, our role is to raise the profile of the policy and the issue itself, given its importance to our economy,” he added.
Mr. Smith said he was “not a fan of tariffs” but had come around to some of the Trump administration’s efforts to open foreign markets to American companies. His constituents’ reactions to Mr. Trump’s tariffs are “mixed,” he said.
On the sidelines of the negotiations, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have written letter after letter, held briefings with experts and traveled to Mexico City during negotiations last month to make their priorities heard.
The administration is also sparring with some lawmakers about the role Congress will play in approving the pact. Mr. Greer said Thursday that he would seek congressional approval if the revised pact changed U.S. law, but that the changes were more likely to affect Canada and Mexico than the United States.
“We don’t really need to change our laws to get better terms of trade with Canada and Mexico,” he said. “We need Canada and Mexico to change the way they treat our country.”
The Constitution delegates commerce as the responsibility of the legislature. But the bill Congress passed to enact the USMCA gives the executive branch the power to change certain rules, although some say the changes the administration is pushing go beyond what Congress intended.
Mr. Smith said he could envision “a path that would mean Congress wouldn’t necessarily have to vote on it again.” But Democrats, including Ms Sánchez, say Mr Trump should put the deal to a congressional vote.
Lawmakers from both parties have also argued that while the administration does not need them to approve its changes, Mr. Trump turns to Congress if he wants his policies to be sustainable in the long term. Otherwise, the next president could relax them.
Greta M. Peisch, a trade lawyer who served in the office of the U.S. Trade Representative during the Biden administration, said there was a “bright line” legally dictating that Congress must have a role when U.S. law was changed or if the U.S. struck a new trade deal.
However, if the USMCA is amended without requiring changes to the law, it is not exactly clear what the role of Congress should be. That, she said, is “a really big gray area.”
Tony Romm contributed with reporting.
