Sen. Rob Portman backs new trade deal with Mexico and Canada, Sen. Sherrod Brown will need to review it

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The newly announced trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada will help Ohio by expanding market access for the state’s farm products, encouraging more auto production and making online sales easier for Ohio companies, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman said Tuesday.

Portman, a Cincinnati-area Republican who served as U.S. Trade Representative during George H. W. Bush’s presidency, called the long-awaited agreement “a significant improvement” over the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, that it would replace.

“By opening more markets, it is good for American workers, farmers, and manufacturers, and it will create thousands of new jobs here in the United States,” said a statement from Portman. He praised “painstaking bipartisan negotiations” over the past year between President Donald Trump and Democrats who control the U.S. House to reach a deal that he said would boost U.S. manufacturing and level the playing field for American workers, farmers and service providers.

“After USMCA is passed by the House, I’m confident the Senate will approve it,” said Portman.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Cleveland Democrat, said he and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon have been pushing to ensure the updated agreement helps U.S. workers and includes strong labor enforcement provisions they’ve proposed.

“I will need to read the agreement text and talk to important stakeholders before I determine whether it will get my vote,” said Brown.

Democrats in the House who balked at the agreement’s initial drafts said it was changed in a way that would bolster the economy, support workers, protect the environment and improve access to affordable prescription drugs. They said they closed enforcement loopholes and streamlined the dispute settlement system to ensure that trading partners live up to their commitments, demanded new monitoring mechanisms to ensure compliance with labor and environmental standards, and removed provisions that they believed would drive up prescription drug costs.

“There is no question that this trade agreement is much better than NAFTA," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said as she announced the deal. "But in terms of our work, here, it is infinitely better than what was initially proposed by the administration.”

President Donald Trump on Monday said the agreement would replace “probably the worst trade deal ever made, which was NAFTA” with “one of the best trade deals ever made for our country.”

“This is a very big deal,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “That’s the biggest border in the world economically, believe it or not: our southern border. And our Canadian border does a lot of business. But the southern border, people don’t realize, the largest number -- in terms of dollars, the biggest in the world by far. Not even close. And with Canada, very big.”

Business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers praised the agreement. The manufacturing group’s president and CEO, Jay Timmons, said his group felt the agreement fell short of setting a “gold standard” in protection of intellectual property, but would deliver certainty for the 2 million manufacturing workers whose jobs depend on North American trade.

A statement from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka also called the agreement imperfect, but praised the enforceable labor standards it would set, including a process that allows for inspections of factories and facilities that aren’t living up to their obligations. He said it would also eliminate “special carve outs for corporations like the giveaway to Big Pharma in the administration’s initial proposal and loopholes designed to make it harder to prosecute labor violations.”

“There is no denying that the trade rules in America will now be fairer because of our hard work and perseverance,” said Trumka. “Working people have created a new standard for future trade negotiations. President Trump may have opened this deal. But working people closed it. And for that, we should be very proud.”