Transcripts For CSPAN2 Congress And NAFTA Negotiations 20180

CSPAN2 Congress And NAFTA Negotiations February 12, 2018

Discussion. Hello, welcome, jennifer join us here today. Im a master of arts student here. The north American Free tradee agreement was enforced on january 1, 1994. The agreement was signed by president george bush on december 7 t. And a 1992 when approved by congress in November November 101994. Excuse me, 1993. Nafta is significant because of the most comprehensive Free Trade Agreement negotiated at the time and several groundbreaking provisions served as a template model for the new generation of freetrade agreement the United States later negotiated and also served as a template for certain provisions of multilateral trade negotiations as part of the round. This Year Congress will decide on what legislation to consider into a man on the current nafta. They will also consider the ramifications of negotiating or regarding nafta and how it might affect the u. S. Economy and Foreign Relations of partners mexico and canada. Some contend withdraw from the tpp issue of competitiveness from economic leaders in the region while others either withdraws a way to prevent lowercost and potential job losses. Key provisions of the tpp may be addressed in modernizing the renegotiating nafta. Which is at this point more than two decades d old. Some proponents of open and rules a straight contend maintaining nafta or deepening economic relations with canada and mexico will promote a common trait agenda with shared values and generate Economic Growth while opponents of the treaty of say the agreement has caused worker display rack. We areem lucky to have such a distinguished panel with us here today from the center for strategic and international studies. First of either to introduce scott miller. He is currently the Senior Adviser at the Leadership Academy at csi Leadership Academy is the sis, focusing on Leadership Development programs are public and private sector executives from 19972012, mr. Miller was director of global trade policy for Procter Gamble appeared he led Many Campaign supporting u. S. Freetrade Free Trade Agreement and has been a contributor to u. S. Trade and investment policy with mediators. Mr. Miller insisted Advisory Committee and International Economic policy. Richard miles in the middle is a senior fellow and director of the u. S. Mexico Futures Initiative and the Deputy Director of the American Program at the sis. He has over 20 years of experience as a Foreign Service officer with the department of state Intelligence Officer with the u. S. Army. His diplomatic assignments include the u. S. Embassy in argentina, barbados, germany and iraq. Hes also been the ultimate representative of the united date and the western Hemisphere Affairs at either to the under secretary for political affairs. Dr. Chris sands is director for canadian studies and senior associate at the sis. Hes directed research on the mass implementation of the Automotive Industry and bilateral agreement. Hes a member of the Advisory Board of the Mcdonald Institute and the canada United States fought institute as well as the frequent commentator on media in regards to bilateral trade issues. To start off todays conversation, mr. Miller, would you like to comment and this is a question for going on theld panel. Would you like to comment on how much commercial oversight there has been in the current negotiationsre so far in the roe of trade Promotion Authority so far the National Negotiations . Sure, thank you. And thank you for hosting this event. Its a great pleasure to be here. Book, one of the reasons i found this participate in this panel appealing is because its focused on the right topic. The right topic being how does Congress Deal with the trade agreement just as background, a lot of the coverage of nafta is executive Branch Actions and takes the playbyplay. Follow the News Coverage is who said what and what we think about it. When you consider the role of Congress Come you start to think about the endgame. The United States to recall civics class, the United States government has limited and enumerated powers had one of those enumerated powers is the power to regulate foreign commerce and is an article i of our constitution which is the article dealing with congress. Congress has the power to regulate foreign commerce and i mention this thing called trade Promotion Authority or fast track which is delegation of authority from congress to the executive branch to do the work of negotiating the treaty, but ultimately the successful freetrade agreement of any sort on almost any level requires in implementing though that is passed by both houses of congress and signed by the president. The endgame deals with the congress because youre considering the congress, you youre endgame is some arm of Coalition Politics. In other words, there has to be a set of elements to the agreement or changes to the agreement in the case of nafta that can garner support of 218 house members and 51 senators in the president. Thats always the endgame and its a very important thing tond think about it one of the reasons the u. S. Position on nafta has been somewhat confusing on how it raises the important question of what is going on, what is Congress Role now somewhat behind the scenes. There are a few reasons for that. First, we started these negotiations from the u. S. Do with the president promised to renegotiate nafta without a compelling coalition in support of that promise. Most of the time you recall when the president decided to launch a and notify the congress, and everyone knows quoting the hypocritical that the credit goes. First, do no harm. A lot of resistance initially appeared the second element is somewhat behind the scenes activity is republican house, republican senate, republican president. There are thingsey they want too together. There are things whereo they disagree and theres been a tendency early in this congress to focus on things that they want to work on together, specifically tax reform and add regulatory changes that have been made with the help of the congress led by the administration. Nafta was somewhat controversial because of this do no harm request from the congress or insistence from the congress. It became a family conversation on the site for a long while, at least all of 2017 until the tax reform bill was signed into law. Now you are beginning to see, here we are february 28 teen come you see the things happening. The house ways and meansnspp committee met with the members of the republican side of the Senate Finance committee had a meeting with the president in the white house on trade and just the quotes are not. All of a sudden, congress is beginning to exercise its appropriate and constitutional role of not just oversight of the executive, but ultimately the power to determine what is in nafta. Its been slow coming of frustrating for those who wanted to see it sooner but at least its happening now. Let me stop there. First of all, i am from johns hopkins. Sais, thank you for hosting this panel. The constitutionalal responsibility of oversight, but there is another dimension entirely political in what i mean by that is the start of, but it picked up speed in late summer and early fall. That is the state delegations, governors and state legislators contacting our representatives in washington and underscoring how important nafta was to their individual states. Here im talking about farm exporting states and state to have a heavy automotive sector present. There are 28 states that have mexico as their number one export partner. You are talking about billions of dollars of everything from corn, soybeans, groups from california, wheat, lots of different products that if nafta were to go away, these were heavily contingent. If mexico were to choose to engage in a trade work come in those states in particular would suffer badly. It is no coincidence that at least 28 to 30 vulnerable for the use gop seats are in play in those particular states. You can connect the dots. On one hand the committee in on theersight other hand state governors the white house for calling congress and saying if s nafta goes awayn the getting to trade work, my state is going to be hurt badly and will probably lose seats in the house and maybe even a couple in the senate. As i said, that process started relatively late. Thats an argument we should have been making northeastern states should state should have been making for years. It didnt start happening until last march when it went out the night dates is about to unilaterally withdraw in the new site on a tv by chamber of commerce, trade associations, individual state and also the canadian and Mexican Governments gotten in the actin realized they themselves should be going to state governors and making the case about jobs tied specifically to this day with canada or mexico. Canadians visited every state and talk to every governor and give them a little chart. You can google right now canadians have the best data on u. S. Jobs. Theyve done a fantastic job. Mexicans not as much good they played a little catch up but it didnt come. Thank you for pulling this all together. You were the one who inspired the panel and it would be happening without you. Thank you for that. Youve asked the right question. I want to echo what scott miller and Richard Miles have said with a couple of interesting twist. For people who remember the trade policy r history, when president obama went to congress and asked for trade Promotion Authority and 2014, he was met by some bewilderment. Democrats knew he was in b after critic of the washer while he said he wanted to do the trade agreements which asia and a lot of republicans didnt trust obama on anything. What they wrote which became the bipartisan trade promotion act of 2015 was the most restrictive piece of legislation on administration with so many conditioned strict deadlines that we have seen since the trade act of 1974 during the Ford Administration that set up the fast track process. Congressss gave itself a big roe because he wasnt sure where negotiations were can i go. When donald trump became president there was an open question. Would you see trade Promotion Authority to renegotiate nafta and ultimately he did not because the authority granted to the Obama Administration was Still Available to him and he felt that he wouldnt get any more leeway than congress had given obama, that he would be on a short leash. You might think this is all inside, which it is to a degree. Fascinating to me as chaotic as they say in the Donald Trump Administration to be, theyve never missed a deadline under this trade Promotion Authority bill. Theyve been very faithful to its terms and announce things when theyre supposed to announce them. They put out their preliminary agenda, negotiating objectives on schedule and what that reveals as he rations seriousness about getting the deal and Congress Role. In that vein, which is i think a surprise to many of us. When you look at what the administration set out for negotiating object is, its much more about canada than it is mexico. The issues Congress Cares about on trade are often things that affect a number of states like georgia to washington and oregon. We see very important in new york and wisconsin getting a high profile. We see concerns around the Auto Industry, but as major trade Industries Come forward, canadians have been much more in the target bullseye than the mexicans. Whats also interesting is dynamics were canadians. Richard is quite right theyve been proactive in trying to engage inside u. S. Government, talking to states and so on. Whats interesting is the politics in canada. The canadian and mexican partners, governments have felt a bit on the defensive because theres almost an implicit accusation for the Trump Administration that nafta is the worst deal ever, the partners of ours are cheating. At the beginning, and the trudeau government in canada, mr. Justin trudeaUs Government took the view that is going to stay calm, get along with the Trump Administration to the extent that it could not allow it all to be put on the defensive. As time has gone on to become quite contentious and go actually to the states, some of you remember the dispute, the antidumping dispute, the political dynamic in canada startedd to shift as some canadian started asking we are being so nice to donald trump. Why is he beating us up all the time. All we are getting our trade penalties and not lead the trudeau government to decide they have to take a punch as well. They had to push back and we saw this wto case lunch a few weeks ago, which is a challenge to the way the u. S. Calculates penalties and trade remedy. It specifically deals with lumber, but it actually goes to challenge a lot of trade remedy as that goes back to 74 and before the United States. This is going to be a tricky asset Going Forward in the negotiations. Obviously annoyed ustr considerably appeared because its a broad challenge, it is also brought into in a very negative way, brought into a challenge the way congress has written u. S. Trade remedy laws. Though surprised the u. S. Has written laws to protect its industry and make sure if theres cheating abroad the Commerce Department another step forward defending u. S. Industry. What is fascinating to me is canada chose to challenge u. S. Trade law at a time when the congress is so important. The criticism is not just the Trump Administration or before that the obama and bush administration. It is a challenge the way congress has writtenge these las in canada is on both sides of the asking congress to do better double make the negotiations tricky Going Forward. Thank you. How do you think the you think you need to congress in order to have legislators that they can improve is going to affect negotiations that are ongoing themselves . Anyone . Look, what will have to emerge a something that looks a lot Like Coalition politics. Some group of affect that industries are parties have to take a look at the negotiations as they stand, and decide what they think about them in terms of the effect on businesses, states and markets, whatever its might be and begin to band together to form a side of coalition that will actively build support among the congress did this happens every time. If you want a possibility house and senate may get offended the president come you have to do this work. It often emerges after the negotiations stars. The fact it hasnt shown up that was not a surprise. Theres usually an inkling of it beforehand. The coalition believe it or not the u. S. Korea Free Trade Agreement started with a comment from senator max baucus, chairman max baucus at the time. Committee chairman of the senate would name a comment are taken with a fair amount of weight. That was the emerging idea but were quickly built into a fairly substantial coalition that supported free trade with korea. What has been emerged as a coalition in support of anything in particular in the United States. Theres now a coalition not screw up nafta by generically characterizing the Business Community. This is funny because for 20 or so years, firms across north america dial with nafta as a set of commercial rules in no set of commercial rules is ever perfect. Nafta was the perfect when it darted. It isnt perfect today. It was stable enough that people plan and build business around it. You develop a supplier base, serve customers based on that set of rules. They take it for granted. A friend of my works that the farm bureau, very important coalition, part of any coalition that passes the trade agreement. Prettier farmers think about nafta . They think its great. I said whats on the farm bureaus website when it comes to nafta and he admitted for the past 20 years they have not been. There was not enough to tab on the website of the American Farm bureau federation. Thats a problem. That problem has been solved. The coalition do not harm nafta has materialized and is at it by the way. You will find a nafta page that is pretty comprehensive and affect lives. Theres been some corrective action of people who now understand political dynamic in our making voices known. What hasnt happened yet and

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