Trade deal Archives | Restoring Liberty

A handful of Republican senators are urging President Trump to move quickly on the proposed trade deal with Canada and Mexico and to get it done before Democrats take over the House of Representatives in January.

A letter spearheaded by Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Penn., sent to the White House on Tuesday calls on the president to submit a final copy of the agreement to the Senate by the end of the month so the deal can be fast-tracked under Trade Promotion Authority.

“We are concerned that if the Administration waits until next year to send Congress a draft implementing bill, passage of the USCMA as negotiated will become significantly more difficult,” the letter reads, before explaining the process necessary to get the deal in place before the next Congress is sworn in.

Most urgently, the president would have to submit the final legal test of the agreement and a statement of administrative action by November 30. That would start the clock on the mandatory waiting period before Congress can vote on it.

“If you choose to pursue consideration of the USMCA before the end of the 115th Congress, we commit to working with you in a consultative manner to draft implementing legislation that could win our votes, as well as a majority in the House and Senate,” the letter concludes.

The letter’s signatories are a wide spectrum of Republicans including Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., James Lankford, R-Okla., Ben Sasse, R-Neb., Mike Lee, R-Utah., and Ron Johnson, R-Wisc. (For more from the author of “GOP Senators Urge Trump to Move on Trade Deal Before Dems Control the House” please click HERE)

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By The Hill. Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Sunday that the U.S. “got the better of the deal” in the new U.S.–Canada trade deal.

Harper told host John Catsimatidis in an interview airing Sunday on AM 970 in New York that Canada was “kind of bruised” by the new agreement.

“Canadians generally recognize that the United States got the better of the deal,” Harper said. “What’s pretty clear is the U.S. got some things and didn’t lose anything. Canada had to give on some things and didn’t really have any wins.”

“And I think Canadians are fairly bruised about that because the view in Canada is that we’ve been a pretty good trading partner and play by the rules,” he added.

Harper’s comments follow after the U.S. and Canada reached a deal late last month on an updated North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The deal, dubbed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, was reached at the end of September following tensions between Ottawa and Washington. (Read more from “Canadians Recognize Trump Got the Better of Them in New Trade Deal” HERE)

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Study Says Canada Needs Trade With China, but the USMCA Will Make That More Challenging

By Global News. The legal world was confounded a few weeks ago when it discovered that the United-States-Mexico-Canada-Agreement (USMCA) contained a clause requiring Canada to keep the United States abreast of its intentions to enter free trade talks with “any non-market economies” – which many took to mean China.

Though most experts predicted that this section, Clause 32, would make it much more challenging for Canada to engage in trade talks with China, a study compiled by the Ottawa-based research firm Public Policy Forum states that this is precisely what Canadian regulators need to do.

“You can’t really be serious about a diversification strategy if you don’t include China in it. China accounts for 33 per cent of global growth, economic growth. That is an extraordinary number. It’s more than all the rest of Asia combined,” explained Edward Greenspon, co-chair of Publicly Policy Forum.

The clause specifically states that “at least three months prior to commencing negotiations, a party shall inform the other parties of its intention to commence free trade agreement negotiations with a “non-market country.” If any party is opposed to the agreement struck, they’re permitted to give notice of withdrawal from the USMCA. (Read more from “Study Says Canada Needs Trade With China, but the USMCA Will Make That More Challenging” HERE)

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