Patrick Semansky/AP Photo
A protester stands near a rally supporting passage of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement on trade, September 12, 2019, on the National Mall in Washington.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at her weekly press conference yesterday that a deal on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was “imminent,” and that it would serve as a template for future trade deals. Without seeing the final agreement, which has been subject to haggling between House Democrats and the U.S. trade representative’s (USTR) office, it’s hard to say whether that prospect is cheering. But it’s clear that whatever agreement gets reached will have been driven by politics rather than substance.
The clamor among freshman swing-seat Democrats to put USMCA up for a vote has reached epidemic proportions. And the rationale has nothing to do with raising labor standards for Mexican workers or improving our manufacturing competitiveness, or farm exports. It’s just, bluntly, “We need to show that we can do something.” That’s a direct quote from Henry Cuellar (D-TX), one of the 11 centrist Democrats who signed a letter to USTR undermining the Democratic position to remove rigid patent protections for high-cost prescription drugs. Ben McAdams (D-UT), another signee, gave virtually the same quote to The Wall Street Journal.
The tell here is that the members engaged in the actual House Democrats’ negotiating with USTR are “less than confident” about an imminent deal. All the chatter is coming from the business-friendly swing-seaters who want to do something to say that they did something, and Nancy Pelosi, who sees those business-friendly swing-seaters as the only members who matter. It’s been reported that Cheri Bustos, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has been pressuring the leadership for a USMCA vote.
The short-term thinking here is really harmful. If there’s any voter alive who thinks, “Well I wasn’t going to vote for this Democrat, but the USMCA passed so now he’s OK,” I’d like to meet them. I was at an event in D.C. where Pelosi spoke this week, and she ran through her priorities for the rest of the year—there was applause for lowering drug prices, applause for election security, and dead silence when she said, “We’re going to pass the USMCA!”
Meanwhile, in trade deals the details matter, and there’s no indication yet that the weak labor controls in the USMCA—under the initial language, the murder of a union activist may not qualify as a violation of the agreement, because it didn’t occur “periodically and repeatedly”—have been fixed to any legitimate degree. In fact, Mexican trade unionists continue to be murdered. The legacy of getting this wrong will linger long beyond next November.
On one side you have the Problem Solvers Caucus, nervous freshmen, Richie Neal, Cheri Bustos, and innumerable corporate lobbyists. On the other side you have labor and access-to-medicine groups. Who will Pelosi choose?
LINKS TO MY STORIES
Payday lenders are trying to block future minimum wage increases in Arizona, because keeping people poor helps their business. (Read the story)
Monopoly entertainment group Disney is leveraging its market power to increase membership in Disney+. (Read the story)
The ridiculous D.C. invite of the week is a “Hill briefing” that’s actually stealth lobbying for the health data industry. (Read the story)
Republicans ginned up a budget-cutting blueprint for hamstringing the next Democratic agenda—why are Sheldon Whitehouse and some other Senate Dems helping them? (Read the story)
ALSO AT THE PROSPECT
Max Moran on a Big Tech antitrust conference full of revolving-door types.
Jamie McCallum with a retrospective on the 20th anniversary of the Battle in Seattle.
Team coverage of the Supreme Court DACA hearings from Brittany Gibson and Marcia Brown.
Naomi LaChance uncovers emails showing Steve King constantly chattering with Homeland Security officials.
Jonathan Guyer on Carlyle Group CEO David Rubenstein’s rehabilitation of George W. Bush.
APPEARANCES
Thanks to everyone who came out to our event in D.C. this week with The American Conservative, “The Bipartisanship America Needs: Left-Right Convergence on Confronting Monopoly Power.” We will have video at prospect.org soon.
YES, I KNOW
Deval Patrick. Man, when Bain Capital is like only the third- or fourth-worst thing on your résumé, you have problems.
SHARING THE WEALTH
The Stephen Miller emails: inside a mind you didn’t want to enter. (SPLC Hatewatch)
Pete Buttigieg did an opt-out endorsement for his plan for Black America. How McKinsey of him! (The Intercept)
Speaking of McKinsey, the consultant is under criminal investigation. (NY Times)
World Health Organization certifying generic insulin to arrest the crisis. (NY Times)
Libra not going well for FACEBOOK, so they’re shifting to a straight payment system. (The Verge)
Black student loan borrowers default at twice the rate of whites. (Reuters)
The opportunity zone tax break is a particularly dirty lobbying free-for-all. (ProPublica)
Cenk Uygur running for Congress. (HuffPost)
Amazon protesting Pentagon cloud contract awarded to Microsoft. (AP)
Yes, Mike Bloomberg was a typical Wall Street misogynist. (NY Times)
A portrait of hell, that is, Politicon. (Insider)
