[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 193 (Wednesday, December 4, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6833-S6835]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



              United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am on the floor today to urge the U.S. 
Congress to do the right thing, and that is to allow a vote on this new 
agreement between Mexico and Canada and the United States.
  Unbelievably, this agreement was negotiated a year ago--they signed 
it at the end of November last year--and yet for a year now, Congress 
has refused to take it up. It has got to go to the House of 
Representatives first, and Speaker Pelosi and the House Democrats who 
control that body have not been willing to at least take it to the 
floor for a vote.
  The agreement is such a big improvement over the status quo. The 
status quo is the NAFTA agreement, which is 25 years old. The new 
agreement, which was negotiated a year ago, gives something that Canada 
wants, Mexico wants, and the United States wants. We want it because it 
is really important to us.
  It is particularly important to my home State of Ohio. I will tell 
you our No. 1 trading partner by far is Canada. We send about 40 
percent of our exports to one country: Canada. So to have a better 
agreement with our biggest trading partner--and our second biggest 
trading partner, which is Mexico--is really important. Alongside 
Mexico, our trade with Canada accounts for about $28 billion a year.
  I am hearing a lot about it. I am hearing from Ohio farmers. They 
have had a tough time. A combination of bad weather, a combination of 
shrinking markets for them in China, and a combination of low commodity 
prices going in to the bad weather period last year has made it really 
tough for farmers. A lot of them are having a very difficult time 
making ends meet this year.
  They see the USMCA for what it is, an expansion of their market. They 
can sell more stuff to Canada and to Mexico, and that will help them 
improve their prices and help them to be able to get through this tough 
period, so for them, it is a light at the end of the tunnel. If we can 
get this new trade agreement passed, it means expanded markets for 
dairy products, for pork, for corn and soybeans, and other commodities. 
Get those prices up, and give our farmers a chance to compete on a 
level playing field. This is a good thing. That is why they are all for 
it.
  Businesses really want the USMCA passed. By the way, I hear mostly 
from small businesses about this because they increasingly have looked 
to markets overseas--particularly Canada and Mexico in the State of 
Ohio--and they are concerned that if we do not put this agreement 
forward, we are going to have a lot of uncertainty out there, and they 
are going to sell less stuff, rather than more stuff, to these 
countries.
  So a lot of small manufacturers in particular sell a lot from Ohio to 
Canada and to Mexico, and they tell me they want this agreement 
passed--and passed now--because it will really help them. My colleagues 
here in the Senate

[[Page S6834]]

have to be hearing the same thing. When they go home, they have to be 
hearing from these same people because all around the country, when 
people look at this agreement, they say: Of course, this is better than 
the status quo for my business. Workers, farmers, service providers 
will all benefit.
  Taken together, our neighbors in Canada and Mexico now make up the 
biggest foreign market for U.S. goods anywhere, so these two countries 
together combined are the biggest market anywhere in the world. One-
third of all American exports in 2019 have gone to Canada or Mexico, 
way ahead of all foreign markets. It is about 12 million jobs, so 12 
million jobs nationally depend on trade with Canada and Mexico.
  I am a former trade lawyer myself--a recovering trade lawyer--and I 
do not practice it today, but I did at one time. I am also a former 
member of the trade committee in the House of Representatives, called 
the Ways and Means Committee, and today, I am a member of the Senate 
Finance Committee, which is the trade committee over here. In the 
interim, I was U.S. Trade Representative for President George W. Bush. 
I will tell you, from all the experiences that I have had in trade, I 
have learned one lesson, which is, yes, it is complicated, trade has a 
lot of nuances, it is politically difficult, but it is really important 
to our economy.
  Why? Because we have got about 5 percent of the world's population 
and about 25 percent of the economy here, so it is in our interest to 
access that other 95 percent of consumers outside of America in order 
to keep America as a prosperous country.
  That is what these trade agreements tend to do. The problem with the 
NAFTA agreement, the current one, is that it is 25 years old, and it 
needs to be updated. You know, it is one of the oldest trade agreements 
we have, and it is one that is fraught with problems right now, some of 
which are fixed in this USMCA.
  The USMCA, the successor to it, is a lot better. It creates a more 
balanced and more healthy trade relationship with Mexico and Canada for 
us. Again, for the workers and farmers and service providers that I 
represent and other people that this body represents, the level playing 
field is important because, while trade works if it is done properly 
and fairly, it does not work well when you have big trade deficits, 
when other countries cheat, when they do not play by the rules. 
Everything in this agreement helps to level that playing field.

  As an example, right now, our trade agreement with Canada and Mexico 
does not have a lot of things you would expect in a modern agreement, 
like provisions relating to the digital economy. So much of our economy 
now operates on the Internet, yet there is nothing in the NAFTA 
agreement that protects data from tariffs, for example.
  Another one would be labor and environmental standards which are weak 
and unenforceable under the current NAFTA. All of our new trade 
agreements have labor and environmental agreements, and they are 
enforceable. Well, guess what, USMCA does too. It includes a lot of the 
modern provisions that we have in our more recent trade agreements. I 
have got a handy chart here to talk about some of the specific changes 
between USMCA and NAFTA. First, the USMCA means more jobs. The 
independent International Trade Commission said it will add 176,000 new 
jobs. New jobs? USMCA, yes; NAFTA, no.
  By the way, from my home State of Ohio, which is a big auto State, 
thousands of those jobs are going to be created in the auto industry, 
which is a great opportunity for us in America to help to bolster our 
manufacturing--176,000 new jobs is significant, 20,000 in the auto 
industry.
  In fact, it is going to grow our economy by double the gross domestic 
product of that which was projected in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. 
That was the agreement that was done with countries in the Pacific 
region, Asia, and Latin America. It is an agreement that many Democrats 
have praised and a few years back criticized the administration for not 
going into the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But as much as they thought 
that the Trans-Pacific Partnership was going to be good for our 
economy, this is even better for our economy. Again, it more than 
doubles the GDP growth, the economic growth, as compared to the Trans-
Pacific Partnership.
  Second, the agreement does level the playing field we were talking 
about. It has enforceable labor and environmental standards--USMCA, 
yes; NAFTA, no--so another big difference. By the way, these standards 
are one reason why we have lost so many jobs to Mexico over the years.
  Third, the USMCA, like I said, it has new rules for the Internet 
economy. Those new rules of the road are really important, particularly 
to small businesses in Ohio and around the country that rely on 
Internet sales for their businesses.
  Unlike all our modern trade agreements, right now, there is no 
chapter in NAFTA--none at all--as it relates to the digital economy. 
Fortunately for Ohio online businesses, the USMCA has these 
protections. As an example, small businesses that rely on access to 
Canada and Mexico are going to have an easing of their customs burden 
for small values of their products, so both countries have agreed to 
raise their cap. I frankly wish they had agreed to raise it even more. 
But this is important both for small businesses that are in the 
Internet economy to save some money from customs and tariffs, but also 
it simplifies their business, which is fair because the United States 
has a higher cap.
  The USMCA also prohibits requirements that data be localized in 
Mexico and Canada. This is a big concern around the world. The country 
says: Okay, you can do it, but you have to localize your data here. In 
other words, you have to have your servers and your data here in our 
country. That is not required now. Under USMCA, that can be huge for 
our small businesses, and USMCA helps.
  If I may, it does prohibit tariffs on data, which NAFTA does not do. 
So these are key provisions to keep the modern economy moving. And 
voting against USMCA--or not allowing it to come up, which is what is 
happening right now--really means that you believe these burdens and 
uncertainties should continue for our small businesses.
  Fourth, USMCA goes further than any agreement we have toward leveling 
the playing field on steel. Steel production in this country is an 
incredibly important manufacturing sector. In Ohio, we are big steel 
producers. We are proud of that. It is one of the core industries we 
need to keep in this country. USMCA requires that 70 percent of the 
steel in vehicles that are produced under NAFTA in North America has to 
be steel from North America--so USMCA, 70 percent requirement; NAFTA, 
nothing, nothing.
  Fifth, there is also an unprecedented requirement in the USMCA that 
is not in any other agreement in the world and that helps to level the 
playing field considerably by saying that between 40 and 45 percent of 
vehicles have to be made in NAFTA countries by workers earning at least 
$16 an hour. We have heard a lot about, well, it is not fair in our 
dealings with Mexico in particular because they have lower wage rates. 
Well, this is being addressed very directly in a way that it has never 
been addressed in any previous agreement.
  Democrats have been talking about this for years. They should hail 
this as a great breakthrough and allow the NAFTA agreement to end and 
the USMCA to take its place because this is better.
  Voting for USMCA will also help to level the playing field on labor 
costs between the United States and Mexico because this new agreement 
requires that USMCA-compliant autos and auto parts have a higher 
percentage of U.S. and American content.
  Under the NAFTA agreement, that requirement for content is 62.5 
percent. So if you want a car within the NAFTA agreement that gets the 
advantages of NAFTA and that gets to come into the United States at a 
lower tariff from Canada or Mexico, 62.5 percent of it has to be from 
NAFTA countries. Under USMCA, we raised that 62.5 percent up to 75 
percent. This means more autos and more auto parts are going to be made 
here in the United States and you have fewer imports and fewer jobs in 
other countries, like China or Japan or Germany. So this is good for 
us.
  By the way, that 75 percent is the highest content requirement of any 
trade agreement we have. That is in USMCA.

[[Page S6835]]

  All of these things are going to ensure that we have more 
manufacturing jobs in Ohio and across the country.
  Frankly, the Trump administration, and particularly U.S. Trade 
Representative Bob Lighthizer, has listened to Democrats' concerns--
listened very carefully--and then incorporated these concerns into this 
agreement.
  Some of the concerns have also been raised by Republicans over the 
years, but, frankly, when I was U.S. Trade Representative, it was 
Democrats who mostly raised these concerns about the labor standards 
being enforceable and ensuring that you had something like the minimum 
wage that is now in this agreement.
  These are provisions that Democrats have demanded for years. Yet now 
we can't get a vote. They will not even let it be voted on. How does 
that make sense? How do you explain it? I don't believe any Democrat 
thinks the status quo, NAFTA, is better than the USMCA. If they do, I 
would challenge them to explain to the American people why they think 
the status quo, NAFTA, is better than USMCA.
  Blocking this trade agreement hurts so many sectors of our economy, 
as I have talked about. It hurts our auto industry and the hard-working 
men and women who are on the assembly lines. It hurts our farmers. They 
aren't going to be able to gain new access to markets in Canada and 
Mexico. That is why nearly 1,000 farm groups from our country have now 
come out strongly to support USMCA. Blocking USMCA means blocking our 
farmers out of these markets.
  With all of these new requirements and all of these new improvements, 
it should be clear to everyone that this is not an effort to rebrand 
NAFTA. This is new. It is different. It is not your father's 
Oldsmobile. They are big and meaningful changes that will benefit all 
of us.
  In short, USMCA is good for jobs. It is good for small businesses. It 
is good for our farmers. It is good for workers, and it is good for the 
economy.
  This is a rare opportunity, my colleagues, to do something that is 
good for America and to do it in a bipartisan way. It can have such a 
positive impact at a time when our country needs to have us come 
together and do something that is good for everybody.
  To Speaker Pelosi and the House Democrats: The ball is in your court. 
We realize that. Under the rules up here in Congress as to how you deal 
with trade agreements, this has to start in the House of 
Representatives. If it were to come to the floor here in the Senate, I 
believe it would pass and pass with a good bipartisan margin because it 
just makes so much sense. But it has to go through the House first.
  If that agreement did come to the House floor, I believe logic would 
prevail, and it would pass there, as well, because I believe Members 
would say: Here is my choice, and it is a binary choice: Do I go with 
the status quo, NAFTA, that I have been complaining about for years, or 
do I go with the new and improved USMCA? I think that is a pretty easy 
vote for a lot of Members who look at this objectively and with the 
interests of their constituents in mind.
  A vote for USMCA, quite simply, is a vote for improved market access, 
more U.S. manufacturing, and a more level playing field for American 
workers, farmers, and service providers.
  A vote against USMCA and blocking it from coming to the floor is a 
vote to keep NAFTA. It is as simple as that. A vote against USMCA is a 
vote for the status quo, which is NAFTA.
  Supporting NAFTA today means supporting unenforceable labor and 
environmental standards, nonexistent digital economy provisions, and 
outdated rules of origin provisions that allow more automobiles and 
auto parts to be manufactured overseas rather than in America. We have 
a chance to fix all of this by passing USMCA.
  I am confident that this new agreement will pass if we can get it up 
for a vote because the American people will demand it. There is plenty 
of time for politics between now and the 2020 election. Right now, 
let's focus on what is best for the American people. Let's work 
together and put them first, and, by doing so, let's pass USMCA.
  I yield back my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). The Senator from Utah.