[The vast majority of the House Democratic Caucus are progressives
on the issue of trade. They have staunchly insisted that without
drastic changes, a new NAFTA is not worth having. They have taken
their cues from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.]
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KILLING NAFTA SOFTLY   [[link removed]]

 

Robert Kuttner
November 22, 2019
The American Prospect
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_ The vast majority of the House Democratic Caucus are progressives
on the issue of trade. They have staunchly insisted that without
drastic changes, a new NAFTA is not worth having. They have taken
their cues from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. _

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the offstage hero of this saga,
engaged in a Twitter war with Trump this morning., Manuel Balce Ceneta
/ AP Photo

 

People who have been following the convoluted negotiations on the new
update to NAFTA, between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Trump
administration, have been baffled about how to interpret this complex
dance. Herewith an explanation.

The back story: Last December, Trump announced that he was pulling the
U.S. out of NAFTA and would replace it with a much better deal, which
he rebranded the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement, or USMCA. This was one
part Mexico-bashing, one part sucking up to industrial unions and
workers in the Midwest, and one part Trump’s effort to posture
hardline on trade generally.

But a revised NAFTA had to be approved by the House, which
unfortunately for Trump now has a Democratic majority. And the deal
that Trump devised was a stinker. It added a couple modestly decent
provisions, like wiping out the pro-corporate investor-state dispute
settlement (ISDS) process, which allows companies to sue nations that
change laws in ways presumed to violate trade deals for expected
future profits. But its protections for labor were far too weak. And
it continued some odious provisions such as sweetheart provisions for
the drug industry, allowing longer patent protections and even higher
drug prices. And a lot more
[[link removed]].

So there commenced prolonged negotiations between a House working
group headed by Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, the most
influential corporate Democrat in the House, and Trump’s top trade
negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, on how to improve the draft agreement.
Both dearly want a deal. Neal has issued repeated statements
[[link removed]],
sometimes with Pelosi by his side, insisting that a deal is almost at
hand. This week, when Pelosi and Neal took the process over
[[link removed]] from
the working group for direct negotiations with Lighthizer, there was
reason to believe they might cement that deal.

But the vast majority of the House Democratic Caucus are progressives
on the issue of trade. They have staunchly insisted that without
drastic changes, a new NAFTA is not worth having. They have taken
their cues from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the offstage hero of
this saga, who engaged with his own Twitter war with Trump
[[link removed]] this
morning.

Two members of the working group have confirmed to me that nothing
will be approved unless Trumka signs off on it. And despite a lot of
posturing by Neal that a deal is just around the corner, Trumka
isn’t budging.

Another set of cynical players are a small but vocal contingent of
corporate Democrats, who have been pressuring Pelosi to accept a deal.
This gang is led by Cheri Bustos
[[link removed]] of
Illinois, who chairs the House Democrats’ fundraising arm, the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

Supposedly, “frontline” Democrats—freshmen in districts carried
by Trump—need this deal. But think again. A total of 43 Democrats
flipped Republican seats last year, but only 14 members of the entire
Democratic caucus
[[link removed]] signed
a letter of support last summer urging their leadership to reach
agreement. Most of the freshmen want no part of Trump’s deal.

The reality is that Bustos, Neal, and other corporate Democrats are
using the supposed need for freshmen to be able to vote for a NAFTA
deal as camouflage for the real game—namely, corporate Democrats
voting with House Republicans to hand corporate America (and Trump) a
victory. It’s not as if ordinary voters in the Midwest are on their
edge of their seats following every detail of the NAFTA talks. This is
all cynical inside-baseball.

As for Pelosi, who has been intermittently criticized by House
progressives for playing footsie with Neal, my reporting suggests that
she is playing a kind of deft four-dimensional chess.

For starters, Pelosi does not want Trump to be able to contend that he
had a great NAFTA deal, but that House Democrats killed it for purely
partisan reasons. So she has been going to great lengths to find out
the best deal she can get—and the deal continues to be lousy. Then
when the talks collapse, it’s Trump’s fault, not hers.

Second, with an impeachment vote coming up, she needs a united caucus.
Pelosi needs to demonstrate to the small gang of corporate Democrats
that she negotiated in good faith, so that they don’t go away mad.

On the broader trade front, Pelosi needs a good working relationship
with Robert Lighthizer going forward. There are far bigger fish to
fry, namely China. Many progressive trade activists value Lighthizer,
perhaps Trump’s only decent appointee, and don’t want to blow him
off.

There is also the complex calculation of how trade plays in the 2020
election. On the one hand, if a new NAFTA actually delivered something
for industrial workers in the Midwest, Democrats would want to share
in the credit. On the other hand, why hand Trump bragging rights,
especially when the substance of the deal delivers just about nothing.

On Thursday, after weeks of mixed signals, Pelosi finally seemed to
pull the plug. Contradicting Neal’s endless prattling about a deal
being in sight, Pelosi said simply
[[link removed]],
“I’m not even sure if we came to an agreement today, that it would
be enough time to finish—it just depends on how much agreement we
come to.” By finish, Pelosi meant in the 2019 session of Congress.

Trump, angered by the delay, lashed out at Trumka
[[link removed]] on Fox
and Friends this morning, claiming that he was “playing [Pelosi]
like a fiddle.” Trumka struck back on Twitter
[[link removed]], saying
that Trump should “stop fighting us so hard and negotiate a NAFTA
that actually works for workers.”

Last night my sources confirmed that the two sides are nowhere near an
agreement. And of course, if Trump’s revised NAFTA is not approved
in 2019, it will certainly not be approved in an election year as the
impeachment drama reaches its climax.

Well played.

_Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect,
and professor at Brandeis University's Heller School_

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