President Donald Trump has renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and has penned a new United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), a measure that both Mexico and Canada have agreed on and shares extensive bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress.
Mexico has already ratified the agreement.
The USMCA will make trade between the three countries fairer, but according to House Republicans, the bill is now being held up in the House of Representatives over political reasons.
House Republicans blame Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic House leadership of not putting the bill up for a vote because it would give President Trump a victory they don’t want to give him.
Democrats say that they are holding up the vote for nothing more than they want to iron out some labor issues that they would like addressed.
Speaker Pelosi said that they are inching closer to backing the USMCA.
Rep. Stephanie Murphy (R), a “Blue Dog Democrat” in the House, fiercely advocated for Trump’s trade deal, stating that “both sides” were working hard to find common ground because NAFTA needed to be replaced.
“#NAFTA, our outdated trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, needs to be replaced with a better agreement that will benefit America’s workers, farmers, businesses, and families – while also fortifying our relationship with our two closest neighbors,” tweeted Murphy as she wrote #USMCA
Rep. Murphy’s support for the trade deal continued, as the Orlando-area congresswoman said that “while well-negotiated trade agreements can improve our economy and security, I also know poorly-negotiated trade pacts can hurt America’s workers and make it harder to maintain broad-based support for the concept of freer and fairer trade.”
Murphy’s tweetstorm in support of the USMCA was in response to the U.S International Trade Commission's unanimous ruling that Mexican tomato imports threatened the livelihood of American farmers.
Mexico’s continued tomato imports were being sold in the U.S. under fair market value, undercutting American farmers and threatening their livelihood.
