Rep. Peter Defazio Statement on Us-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement

Statement

Rep. Peter DeFazio today released the following statement on the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement:

"Twenty-five years ago, when President Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), he promised the deal would mean good-paying American jobs. Unfortunately, those claims couldn't have been further from the truth, and NAFTA has led to the loss of millions of American family-wage jobs over the past twenty-five years.

"I voted against NAFTA, helped to lead efforts against it in the House of Representatives, and have spent my career fighting on behalf of the American worker. As a result, I have voted against every so-called free trade deal proposed to Congress since then--deals that have prioritized profits over people and inflicted harm on workers' rights, consumer safety, and the environment.

"Working Americans have been waiting for more than two decades for the opportunity to fix NAFTA's failed policies. For twenty-five years, I have been fighting for a truly transformative replacement that supports American workers while safeguarding the environment and protecting consumers. Unfortunately, I do not believe that the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is that transformative deal, and, as a result, I will vote against it.

"I am pleased that the agreement includes a number of improvements upon NAFTA, many of which I have long fought for and helped secure, including provisions that will better enable the U.S. to regulate cross-border trucking. However, I do not believe the overall package goes far enough to raise standards and protect workers, consumers, and the environment.

"The USMCA will not bring back the hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs that were lost to Mexico, nor will it stop the outsourcing of jobs that continues, because of their country's deeply entrenched system of wage and rights suppression. Unless we enact a trade agreement that upends this system altogether, we will continue to hemorrhage American jobs to Mexico. I do not believe Mexico has devoted the funding or the staffing necessary for these changes, nor do I believe this agreement goes far enough in ensuring that workers and the U.S. have the remedies needed to prevent abuses from continuing to occur moving forward.

"Furthermore, I believe that the USMCA will continue to promote pro-polluter, climate-denying policies. This agreement should take bold steps to address climate change and to curb corporate polluting at a critical time when we need transformational solutions to address the existential threat of climate change.

"As I did under NAFTA, I will continue to push for robust oversight and enforcement of the USMCA's labor and environmental standards, as weak as they are. I will also continue to fight for a truly transformative deal that sets a new standard for 21st century trade agreements."

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