Previous presidents gave lip service to curbing China's unfair trade practices, but never followed through, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said during a Q&A at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. "And President Trump is following through. Don't blame Trump, blame the system he inherited." Kudlow, who called Trump a disrupter, acknowledged that he is "more of a doctrinaire free trader" than his boss. But, he said, the China problem can't be left alone. "China has played fast and loose with the rules," Kudlow said Oct. 4. "The World Trade Organization needs reforms to enforce those rules. China is not a developing country anymore."
Mara Lee
Mara Lee, Senior Editor, is a reporter for International Trade Today and its sister publications Export Compliance Daily and Trade Law Daily. She joined the Warren Communications News staff in early 2018, after covering health policy, Midwestern Congressional delegations, and the Connecticut economy, insurance and manufacturing sectors for the Hartford Courant, the nation’s oldest continuously published newspaper (established 1674). Before arriving in Washington D.C. to cover Congress in 2005, she worked in Ohio, where she witnessed fervent presidential campaigning every four years.
Vice President Mike Pence said American voters will not be swayed by Chinese propaganda and tariffs aimed at rural Republican constituencies, and that the administration will keep escalating tariffs on China until abuses end. "Our message to China's rulers is this president will not back down," Pence said Oct. 4 at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. "We'll continue to take action against Beijing until the theft of American intellectual property ends once and for all. And we will continue to stand strong until Beijing stops the predatory practice of forced technology transfer."
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer fired back at critics who say the auto rules of origin will make North American cars less competitive for export beyond the NAFTA countries and that the labor-friendly changes to the pact will not be enough to garner substantial Democratic votes. Lighthizer, who was speaking on Laura Ingraham's political talk radio show on Oct. 2, said: "The people who say we shouldn't have renegotiated this thing are just engaging in self-deception. We were witnessing literally the loss of our automobile industry, parts and companies to Mexico and other places."
Witnesses from the United States Council for International Business, the Aluminum Association and the International Intellectual Property Alliance say that China is not living up to its World Trade Organization commitments on many fronts, even as there are some signs of movement away from practices that damage foreign competitors.
A bill that would require advance data from all international mail by 2020 -- designed to help CBP interdict small-scale fentanyl and carfentanil shipments, particularly from China -- is headed to the president's desk after the Senate voted 98-1 on Oct. 3 to approve the conference report of a package of bills that attacked the opioid epidemic from many angles.
Closing a trade deal with Canada and Mexico with the threat of tariffs on the auto sector has emboldened President Donald Trump for his battle with China, said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "I think the most interesting thing that Donald Trump said in his press conference yesterday is that he made it very clear that he sees the tariffs he put in place as negotiating leverage," Alden said on a conference call with reporters Oct. 2.
The scaling back of the investor-state dispute system, a wage component to rules of origin and a more enforceable labor and environmental standard all address Democrats' complaints that free trade erodes American workers' wages and jobs and privileges corporations over citizens, said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The politics of this are sort of fascinating here," he said of the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Canada and the U.S. reached a deal on NAFTA 2.0 late Sept. 30, which was announced a half hour before the deadline to release the text.
The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement is not a rewritten NAFTA, President Donald Trump said Oct. 1. Instead, "This one is a brand new deal," he said during a White House event. Lawyers who have begun reading the text say the treaty builds on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the original NAFTA, while including some important new provisions. Mark Warner, a Canadian-U.S. trade lawyer, said that while Trump's speech was full of puffery, "the auto stuff is significant. I don’t think anyone should say it’s not significant."
As effusive as President Donald Trump was about the significance of his NAFTA rewrite, he was cautious about its chances of getting through Congress next year. Polls suggest Democrats could retake the majority in the House of Representatives, and there is a significant number of Democrats voted against the original NAFTA, or who pledged to vote against the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The earliest a vote could come, because of timelines laid out in fast track, would be in February. But it's likely to be later, since that doesn't include the time needed for Congress to draft implementing legislation.