Mulvaney Says NAFTA Could Stay in Place If Pelosi Buries USMCA

If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn't bring the new NAFTA to a vote, NAFTA could stay in place, Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said at a conference April 30. Mulvaney dismissed the Democrats' argument that the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement could be amended in discrete ways to satisfy their complaints before going to a vote. Interviewer Maria Bartiromo pointed out that Democrats say "I'm not signing it in its current form."

"Once we send it to Congress, that's it, it gets an up or down vote," Mulvaney replied. "When they say 'I don't want to sign it in its current form,' what that means is they don't want to sign it at all." Mulvaney said "a lot" of Democrats do support the NAFTA rewrite, especially in the Midwest. But he said when other Democrats tell him that the USMCA isn't fair enough to workers, he replies: "'OK, but the choice is what you have now, the status quo or USMCA.' It really is a binary choice. I wonder if they think how we're being treated now is better than USMCA."

He suggested that Pelosi doesn't want to give the new pact a vote because ratification would be an achievement for Donald Trump. He said the administration is asking "our Democrat friends" to try to convince Pelosi to bring an implementing bill to the floor. "If the thing that came to the floor for a vote, it would pass. It would pass overwhelmingly and bipartisanly. She controls the floor, and if it doesn't come for a vote, it's not going to see the light of day."

When Bartiromo asked what would happen if there is no vote, Mulvaney said first: "Well, you could stay status quo ante, which is just NAFTA." He continued, "You could withdraw from NAFTA, which the president has talked about many, many times." Or, he said, you could "negotiate from scratch" with Canadians and Mexicans, and then said that's "unlikely to happen."