An alliance of trade groups and business groups -- including PhRMA, the National Chicken Council and the International Association of Drilling Contractors -- is funding the Pass USMCA Coalition, which will lobby for ratification of the new NAFTA, called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Rick Dearborn, former deputy chief of staff for President Donald Trump, is executive director of the group, and former Obama administration Commerce secretary Gary Locke is honorary chairman.
Senators across the political spectrum -- from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss. -- see levying national security tariffs on imported automobiles as "a step too far," Ohio Republican Sen. Robert Portman said, and he believes his bill, S.B. 365 on Section 232 tariffs could pass Congress and avoid a presidential veto.
Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., said he is skeptical that a formal agreement on trade will be reached in the U.S.-China talks, citing what he called the Trump administration’s lack of “patience,” and that while some features of the renegotiated NAFTA remain in contention, he senses that more in Congress are comfortable with the language.
The two senators from New Mexico -- Democrats Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall -- on Feb. 7 introduced the Trade Facilitation and Security Enhancement Act, S.B. 414, which would require the 10 busiest land ports of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border to be open to commercial vehicles 16 hours a day Monday through Friday and at least eight hours per weekend. The extended hours would need to be put in place no later than six months after the bill's passage. They said spending the money to modernize ports and extend hours would "increase international trade and bolster economic development in border communities."
Canada's Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, talked about the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and Freeland told him during the Feb. 7 meeting that the U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum have to be lifted before the Canadian parliament will consider ratifying the deal to replace NAFTA. Grassley, the new Senate Finance Committee chairman, posted on Instagram after their meeting that "having these tariffs on for [national] security reasons is an affront" to the "gr8" Canada-U.S. cooperation on national security now in place.
A free-market think tank based at George Mason University has published a critique of the U.S. Reciprocal Trade Act, an idea that President Donald Trump is expected to feature in the State of the Union address Feb. 5. The bill (see 1901240017) would give the president the ability to raise the tariff on any item to match that of another country's tariff on the same item. As the Mercatus Center's paper notes, doing such hikes would not be legal in the world trading system's rules regarding Most Favored Nation status. The top U.S. trading partners -- outside of Mexico and Canada, since NAFTA means most goods are duty-free -- are Brazil, China, the European Union, India and Japan. If Trump hiked rates with each of them to match those countries' tariffs, it would increase the average U.S. duty from 2.1 percent to 5.4 percent, author Daniel Griswold said. It would raise duties on 45 percent of imports from those countries. In order to make it work, there would need to be almost 10 times as many duty lines, and it would "exponentially complicate the US tariff code."
A group of 48 Congress members, led by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., asked Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to end a suspension agreement on antidumping with Mexican tomato exporters. They say the agreement is driving Florida tomato growers out of business. More than half the signers are from the Florida delegation, but the bipartisan letter, sent Feb. 1, also drew support from states that are not in direct competition with Mexican tomato imports, such as Michigan, Tennessee and Pennsylvania. The Mexican share of the tomato market has grown from 32 percent to 54 percent since the first suspension agreement in 1996, they said, and since 2002, Mexican tomato exports to the U.S. have more than doubled, while U.S. production has declined 34 percent. "We appreciate your team's efforts to attempt to renegotiate improved terms," they wrote, but added that the agreements have already been renegotiated before, and they have not worked as intended.
The ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, the Senate minority leader and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin Feb. 1 expressing their displeasure with his supposed dovish stance against China. "Any trade agreement that merely addresses the trade balance with China and does not require China to make the permanent structural reforms necessary to remedy the very significant issues identified by the [Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's] investigation will be an abject failure," they wrote. They asked Mnuchin to clarify that it's not true that he has been arguing to back down on structural issues and resolve the trade war.
The Senate Finance Committee has expanded the size of the Trade Subcommittee, not just replacing the three members who lost re-election bids. The subcommittee, officially called the Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness, added Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho; Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio; Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa.; Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.; Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La.; Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind.; Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont.; Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.; Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.; Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., Sen. Catherine Cortez Maston, D-N.M.; and the Finance Committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon. They join returning members Chairman John Cornyn, R-Texas; ranking member Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa.; Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas; Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.; Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga.; and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said the Trump administration will have great difficulty getting the House of Representatives to approve its rewrite of NAFTA. "I'm not aware of a single elected Democratic member of Congress who has endorsed this. I'm aware of many who have panned it. So it's not clear to me what the path forward is. There's a lot of resistance from Democrats. There's a lot of protectionist provisions that were meant to satisfy the protectionist urges of some of my Democratic colleagues, [but] they don't seem to have been sufficient yet," he said Jan. 31 at a reporters roundtable in his office. Toomey suggested that the text is not so protectionist that he's a certain no vote. "With certain changes to the implementing legislation, I could agree to this revised NAFTA. That would require moving in the direction of free traders."