‘NAFTA 2.0’ trade deal presents political conundrum for Pa. Dems Cartwright and Lamb 

WASHINGTON — With only a few legislative days left before Congress adjourns for the year, House Democrats are eager to show that they can legislate while also pursuing an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.

A massive trade deal represents their best shot at showing they can do so — but passing it would hand Trump a major political victory as he heads into the election year.

Blocking the deal, on the other hand, would also exact a heavy political toll. If Congress doesn’t ratify the “new NAFTA,” Democrats may not have a major legislative achievement to point to on the campaign trail next year — which could open them up to GOP charges of inaction and an “obsession” with impeachment.

Especially vulnerable are Democrats in conservative districts with large manufacturing and agricultural sectors, said Bob Salera, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. He pointed to freshman Reps. Haley Stevens and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Abby Finkenauer and Cynthia Axne of Iowa, as well as to four-term Rep. Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania.

“That’s the interesting push and pull of the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement),” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of a nonpartisan political newsletter at the University of Virginia. In addition to the substance of the agreement, Democratic leaders must consider “competing political incentives” as they weigh how — and whether — to proceed.

The House has passed a number of major bills this year, but most are bottled up in the GOP-controlled Senate. But unlike many other bills, the USMCA has strong bipartisan support and the potential to pass both chambers of Congress and win the president’s signature. 

Trump and congressional Republicans are actively pushing for it — and marked the one-year anniversary of the agreement on Saturday with a series of tweets pressuring Democrats to ratify it. But political forces may not be on their side, Kondik said. “The incentive over the past few decades has been toward less bipartisan action, particularly if the party [in control] of the House is different than the party [in control of] the White House.”

That has certainly been the case this year. Nearly halfway through the 116th Congress, about 70 bills have been signed into law. That’s far fewer than recent Congresses, which have seen between 300 and 500 bills passed over two-year sessions (and 700-800 during congressional sessions in the 1970s and 1980s), according to a Vox.com analysis.

Trump and leaders of Canada and Mexico signed the trade agreement on Nov. 30, 2018, but it won’t take effect until it is approved by the legislative bodies of all three governments. 

Proponents argue the agreement would strengthen trade, create jobs and grow the economy. But critics say the draft deal would allow violations of labor and environmental standards to go unchecked and object to protections for the pharmaceutical industry. 

Farmers also want provisions that would ensure that products that are grown, raised and slaughtered in the United States can be identified as such and that would prevent the United States from dumping excess products into foreign countries at below-market prices.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer submitted a draft plan of action to the House in May and has since met with lawmakers to address their concerns.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said last week that a deal is “within range,” but she said last month that she doubted Congress would be able to ratify it before the end of the year — prompting Trump to respond by tweet that the deal was “dead in the water.” 

Moderate House Democrats, meanwhile, are getting “antsy” about the issue, and more than a dozen tried to rally support for a vote on it at a caucus meeting last month, Politico reported.

Speaking to Fox Business in October, Cartwright, whose Lackawanna County-based 8th District seat is being targeted for a GOP takeover in 2020, said the trade deal is a good first step, but doesn’t go far enough.

“What I’m looking for is President Trump to indicate that this is not the end of the line,” Cartwright, D-Pa., told Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures” program.

“This is not the deal that he’s going to be satisfied with. We want to see President Trump sharpen his pencil and do a better job at helping American manufacturing workers. The current deal doesn’t do that,” Cartwright said.

U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, D-17th District, who represents labor-friendly turf in the Pittsburgh suburbs, has also expressed reservations about the agreement. In June, he was among a group of 27 House Democrats who sent a letter to the Trump administration’s trade boss, arguing that the the agreement needed to be renegotiated to secure better terms for workers before sending it to the floor for a vote, Politico reported.

Labor leaders aren’t satisfied yet either.

“As I’ve said for months, if the new NAFTA benefits workers, we’d support it,” Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO, a federation of unions, tweeted on Nov. 22, as Congress adjourned for the weeklong recess. “It’s simply not there yet.”

House Republicans are seizing on the delay. 

“The fact that Democrats have focused on impeachment rather than getting the USMCA passed is going to be a political death sentence for some members of Congress,” Salera said. “Farmers and manufacturers in these districts need this deal in place.” 

Even if Democrats do move forward, GOP candidates are going to remind voters that they had to “wait for Democrats to get their house in order,” Salera said.

But moving forward, at least on the deal in its current form, may not be worth it to Democrats, according to Tamara Kay, a trade expert at the University of Notre Dame and author of “Trade Battles: Activism and the Politicization of International Trade Policy.”

“I don’t [think] the Democrats have a lot to gain if they sign off on an agreement with inadequate labor and environmental enforcement and that will raise the price of medicine for all,” Kay said. If Congress ratifies the USMCA, Trump will claim “total and complete credit” for it. “He’s going to [say], ‘Democrats couldn’t do this for 25 years, and I did it. Look what I did for workers.” 

And, because Democrats will have signed off on it, he will be able to claim he replaced NAFTA, a major campaign promise, she said. Along with building a wall on the southern border, Trump won in part by promising to bring back jobs lost by bad trade deals in the past.

“If it doesn’t get passed, House Democrats will be able to say it wasn’t for lack of trying to get real protections for workers,” Kay said. “They and Democratic presidential candidates will be able to attack Trump for failing to add real teeth to NAFTA — an issue with widespread bipartisan support. They’d say he couldn’t even make improvements when he had all of this leverage — when he had a willing counterpart in Nancy Pelosi, and [when] Democrats have wanted to replace NAFTA for 25 years.”