Trump Signs USMCA, Predicting It Will Bring 'Massive Gains' to Blue-Collar Workers
President Donald Trump, in a signing ceremony Jan. 29, said he would be ending the devastation that NAFTA brought and said that its replacement will strengthen what he called the country's blue-collar boom, “delivering massive gains for the loyal citizens of our nation.” Democrats, who were not invited to the White House ceremony, during their own press conferences ahead of the signing, emphasized how much they'd changed what the president submitted to them, by strengthening labor enforcement and environmental provisions, and removing patent protections for certain kinds of prescription drugs.
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Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., said at a press conference at the Capitol: “The only reason the president is having this signing today is because of what we did, as House Democrats.” He noted that the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters endorsed the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and that 193 Democrats voted for the deal. “They voted for it for one reason -- it’s how we shaped and altered the president’s proposal.” There were also 192 Republican votes in the House for USMCA.
At the White House, Trump singled out the Ford and General Motors CEOs, thanking them for investments that are expected to support more than 5,000 jobs. “Steel Dynamics is building a 1.9 billion-dollar flat roll steel mill near Corpus Christi. And international automakers are pouring $25 billion into the United States, creating 50,000 new American jobs at a minimum,” he said.
The American Iron and Steel Institute's president was in attendance, and he put out a statement saying: “USMCA will help create jobs and foster investment in manufacturing, including strengthening our steel industry supply chains with key customers by incentivizing the use of North American steel in manufactured goods. In addition, USMCA promotes increased cooperation and information sharing among the North American government to address circumvention and evasion of trade remedy orders.”
Trump also briefly name-checked domestic textile producers, saying, “It includes protections for American-made fibers, yarns and fabrics, boosting the U.S. textile industry by numbers that you won’t even believe. You will see them soon.” The National Council of Textile Organizations president was also at the signing. The Information Technology Industry Council reacted to the signing by saying, “The signing of the bipartisan USMCA represents a significant step forward for U.S. leadership in innovation and digital trade and sets a global precedent for modern, rules-based trade.”
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer closed out the ceremony, noting that a big part of the reason the president was elected was because he promised to change trade policy. Lighthizer said past trade policy had led to “the outsourcing of U.S. jobs, and the brazen theft of American intellectual property. For many, NAFTA came to symbolize everything that was wrong with that policy.”
Because Democrats were disappointed with how NAFTA and permanent trade relations with China turned out, “nearly every trade agreement after NAFTA passed with an increasingly narrow majority,” Lighthizer said. Until now. He thanked the Democratic House leadership and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as well as the top Democrat and Republican on the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees. Like Trump, Lighthizer alluded to impeachment during the ceremony. He told the president: “To do this, and to do it under these circumstances, is a monumental part of your legacy, and I'm happy to be part of it.”