Because the Trump administration has cheered on Brexit, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., thinks Congress should not consent to starting negotiations with the United Kingdom on a free trade agreement. Murphy, who spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York April 1, said the U.S. should reach a free trade agreement with the European Union first. Though, in a quick acknowledgement of the difficulty the two sides had during Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership talks, Murphy added "or at least give that FTA a serious try."
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.
After 25 Republican House members met with President Donald Trump and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to talk about how to ratify the new NAFTA, Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., said on Fox Business News March 26 that he thinks Congress can do it before the August recess.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, the new chairman of the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee, told fair trade and health activists in Oregon that he's not comfortable advancing the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement the way it's written now. Blumenauer, D-Ore., held a town hall March 21, which was attended by members of Oregon Fair Trade Campaign, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, health care unions and other liberal groups, according to a blog post by the Oregon Fair Trade Campaign.
If the United Kingdom crashes out of the European Union in 17 days, it has a plan on what its tariff schedule will be, but John Dickerman, head of the Washington office of the Confederation of British Industries, said that there's no answer on who will be ready to take the manifest information from exporters the day after Brexit. "That's a huge challenge," he said.
As long as the trade talks are limited to industrial goods -- which does include fisheries under World Trade Organization rules -- European Union Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said she thinks the talks could conclude before the current commission leaves office in late October. Malmstrom was visiting Washington to talk to her counterpart, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and to give a speech at the Georgetown Law International Update.
A House bill that would require the U.S. government to ban all U.S. exports to any company that violates export controls or sanctions has appeal on both the right and left, said Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., in a recent interview. The bill, H.R. 602, which so far only has Reps. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., and Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., as co-sponsors, is a companion bill to a Senate effort led by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ariz.