The New American
December 13, 2019
• United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Mexican Deputy Foreign Minister Jesús Seade, and Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland sign amendments to USMCA
• Mexican senator says judges on USMCA bi-national panels will have “regional jurisdiction”
• Freeland calls USMCA a “progressive trade agreement” again
• Freeland snubs Trump in remarks at new signing ceremony
• Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal says USMCA is “an agreement shaped by Democrats”
• Neal and Lighthizer agree that amended USMCA is template for future trade agreements
• GOP Senator Pat Toomey says USMCA has “moved way to the left”
On Tuesday, in Mexico City, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Mexican Deputy Foreign Minister Jesús Seade Kuri, and Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland signed the Protocol of Amendments to the Agreement Between the United States of America, the United Mexican States, and Canada. This 27-page document are all of the changes to the USMCA that Democrats spent months negotiating with Lighthizer and the Trump Administration in order to garner their support for approving the USMCA in the Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives. The Protocol of Amendments was signed in Mexico City just as Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats held a press conference on Capitol Hill announcing and praising the new changes to the agreement.
Senator Ricardo Monreal Ávila of Mexico’s socialist National Regeneration Movement, known by its Spanish acronym MORENA, announced, “On behalf of the Senate of the Republic — the body empowered by the constitution for the ratification of accords, treaties, and international conventions — we celebrate that Mexico [and the] United States have made an agreement that allows us to move towards the approval and ratification of [the] trade Treaty between Mexico, United States, and Canada in the two remaining countries.”
Senator Monreal didn’t waste any time in touting the supranational nature of the USMCA. “It will now be easier to establish panels of regional jurisdiction, or with regional jurisdiction, composed of judges from both countries that address all types of differences that may arise on any subject covered by the treaty,” Monreal proclaimed.
