The Border Trade Alliance is asking House and Senate appropriators to dedicate enough funding to hire an additional 1,200 CBP officers. "Current staffing levels fail to address the growing demands of travel and trade at our ports-of-entry," the Oct. 28 BTA letter said. Long waits increase supply chain costs, they said. Providing additional CBP officers at this time of growing volumes of international passengers and cargo would both reduce lengthy wait times and facilitate new economic opportunities in communities throughout the United States.
President Donald Trump, speaking at a fracking conference in Pennsylvania, first said that Democrats don't want to put the NAFTA rewrite up for a vote, then said, "But I think they're going to put it up because everybody wants it, and I think ultimately, they're going to do the right thing."
Despite a lack of response to her last two letters, Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind,, has sent another letter to the Commerce Department about what she called "a glaring lack of transparency, fairness, efficiency and consistency" in how the steel and aluminum Section 232 exclusion requests are handled. She noted that this time, she is also sending the letter to the inspector general for the department.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she's optimistic the administration and trading partners will be able to reach agreement on enforceability that will allow the House to proceed with a vote. Pelosi, speaking at a press conference Oct. 17, said the working group is "making progress every day." She also said that the agreement has to be respectful of global agreements on the environment, and she hopes the provisions on biologics can be resolved to the satisfaction of Democrats. "That's a very big issue in our caucus," she said.
Mexican officials presented a letter from President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to House Ways & Means Chairman Richard Neal Oct. 17 that he is asking the national legislature and state legislatures to increase what they are spending on labor reform in the coming year, including an additional $18.8 million for federal labor courts, $18 million for local conciliation center, $13.5 million for local labor courts and $10 million for training, public education and verification related to the new contracts. The federal government will provide a property worth $23 million to the new labor center, he said,
About 350 companies, trade associations and local manufacturing groups and chambers of commerce are urging Congress to ratify the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement "as soon as possible this autumn." The letter, led by the National Association of Manufacturers and signed by giants like Ford, GM, Fiat Chrysler, Caterpillar, IBM, GE, Honeywell, Bayer and Bristol-Myers Squibb, was sent Oct. 15. It said that ratification "is essential to promoting certainty and growth for manufacturing businesses." Volvo North America and Mahindra Automotive America signed the letter, but BMW and Mercedes -- whose supply chains would likely have to change to meet stricter rules of origin -- did not. The letter referred to trade facilitation -- though not explicitly higher de minimis levels in Canada and Mexico, in saying that the USMCA will eliminate red tape at the border, and make "it easier for small and medium-sized businesses to sell into these critical markets."
The International Association of Machinists sent a letter Oct. 16 to House of Representatives members saying that they should not "rush a vote" without substantial changes being made to pact. The group decried the incentives to send tens of thousands of aerospace manufacturing jobs to Mexico instead of expanding in the U.S. "NAFTA 2.0, as currently written, does not come close to reflecting the much-need changes that labor has submitted to USTR," the union said, "This agreement will not be ready to be considered until its text is changed to reflect our detailed suggestions regarding a number of chapters, including those concerning labor standards, enforcement and rules of origin. Without such changes, NAFTA 2.0 will continue to foster the continuing outsourcing of U.S. jobs to Mexico."
The Congressional Research Service, in a recent report, quantified the U.S.-China trade war and estimated its effects so far on bilateral trade. It said that as of Sept. 1, about 67 percent of U.S. imports from China have additional tariffs, most 15 to 25 percentage points higher, and about 60 percent of U.S. exports to China are taxed at an additional 5 percent to 25 percent.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., at the end of a short trip to Mexico aimed at assessing that country's “ability to follow through on promised reforms” issued a statement that contained a not-too-veiled warning to the Mexican government that is eager for U.S. Congress to ratify the new NAFTA. “Our meeting with President López Obrador shed further light on the Mexican government’s desire and intentions to carry out its labor justice reform, but the United States needs to see those assurances put into action,” the statement said.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., is leading a delegation on a two-day trip to Mexico that began Oct. 7 to talk to Mexican government officials and local workers. The Democrat working group is struggling with the Mexican Labor Department budget for the coming fiscal year (see 1909270050 and 1909260038). Neal is accompanied by Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., who has said the new NAFTA is "not near" to being acceptable (see 1909180036). He's also accompanied by Reps. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., and Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif. The sole other member of the working group in the delegation is Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif.