Dems need to ratify USMCA for good of country

If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic allies are sincere about doing what’s best for our nation, they will pass the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement expeditiously and without amendment.

In the current environment of toxic politics, though, where neither side wants to allow the other a victory, there is every reason to fear that Democrats will put party over nation.

Mexico and Canada are our largest trade partners, taking one-third of U.S. exports. This multilateral trade supports 12 million jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. More than 30 million small businesses export $427 billion in goods and services to Canada and Mexico.

This level of trade is only possible because we have the North American Free Trade Agreement. President Donald Trump may complain about how NAFTA allowed thousands of jobs to leave the United States, but the deal created far more new, higher paying jobs for American citizens than it took away.

Trump was right about one thing, though: NAFTA badly needed updating. The labor and environmental provisions were lousy, and the internet was little more than a novelty when President George H.W. Bush negotiated the deal in the early 1990s.

The USMCA is indisputably a vast improvement over NAFTA. But the same kinds of Democrats who tried to block that deal are still complaining the trade deal doesn’t go far enough on labor and the environment.

If we’re being fair, though, no treaty will ever satisfy these activists, because the USMCA is an international instrument negotiated between sovereign nations. By definition, a treaty is a compromise, not an unconditional surrender of national interests.

The USMCA has the most robust labor and environmental protections of any treaty negotiated by any set of nations. To help quiet Democratic protests in Washington, Mexican senators even took the additional step in April of approving a new labor law that gives workers the right to vote on unions and labor contracts through secret ballots.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador formally sent the treaty to the Senate on Thursday for ratification, where he expects his party to act quickly.

Vice President Mike Pence met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday to strategize on ways to move the USMCA forward. Trudeau formally introduced the treaty for ratification on Wednesday and is trying to win Parliament’s approval before it adjourns for elections this fall.

If Canada’s lawmakers do not ratify by the end of June, the next Parliament will decide the USMCA’s fate. Trudeau’s Liberal Party is trailing in the polls due to a corruption scandal, and Canada’s Conservatives would likely expect an extensive rewrite of the treaty.

Trump submitted a Statement of Administrative Action on Thursday, formally asking Congress to pass the legislation necessary to bring the USMCA into force, despite Pelosi saying she needed more time.

Left-wing Democrats, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, want Congress to reject the good to demand the perfect. In truth, though, they are engaging in an intellectually dishonest political maneuver to embarrass Trump at the expense of the American business community.

Trump has not helped by using the USMCA as a political tool, said David Gantz, a fellow in trade and international economics at Rice University’s Baker Institute. Trump initially refused to drop steel tariffs on Canada and Mexico as part of the deal, and now he refuses to cooperate with Democrats as long as they are considering his impeachment.

“For Ms. Pelosi, I think it’s much more important to let those investigations go forward than it is to ratify the USMCA,” Gantz said.

The USMCA, though, is the kind of issue where professional politicians must put away their partisan talking points to do what’s best for the country.

The new treaty will help workers in all three countries by raising wages for autoworkers and smoothing out trade wrinkles created by the internet. The deal extends intellectual property protections for everything from music to pharmaceuticals.

More importantly, the USMCA keeps trade flowing between all three countries at a time when Trump is challenging China to conform to international standards.

“If you really want the U.S. in North America to be able to compete with China, it’s probably not a good idea to be America alone,” Gantz added.

Trump negotiated a good deal for the United States. Our most important trading partners are doing their part. Pelosi is the only holdup, fearful of irritating her left flank.

Pelosi and the Democrats need to do the right thing: Ratify the USMCA now.

Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and policy. chris.tomlinson @chron.com twitter.com/cltomlinson