Nix NAFTA if Dems want to reopen USMCA

President Donald Trump should withdraw from NAFTA if congressional Democrats insist that the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) be renegotiated, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said ...

“I’ve got to sit down with them,” Grassley said. “If they’re reaching the point where you have to go back to the negotiating table, I would encourage the president to pull out of NAFTA, and I would hope that they’re smart enough to not let that happen. Because why would you want to go back to an environment where there’s higher tariffs on our products into Mexico, than them getting their products into this country? It just doesn’t meet the common sense test.”

In April 2008, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as House speaker, changed House rules, which effectively delayed congressional passage of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement until October 2011, after the Obama administration renegotiated parts of the deal.

Pelosi, who just reassumed the speakership after the House switched from GOP to Democrat control, in December expressed interest about enforceability of the USMCA’s labor and environmental provisions, saying the pact is “just a list” if it can’t be enforced...

This was excerpted from the 10 January 2019 edition of the American Shipper.