USMCA Working Group Member Says Unlikely Any Major Issues Will Be Settled This Month

While Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., says progress is being made in the weekly meetings with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, he said he doubts the working group and USTR will have a meeting of the minds on any of the four planks they're negotiating on in the NAFTA rewrite. The issues outstanding are enforcement, the environment, labor and the biologic drug exclusivity period.

"People won't give up anything until they have to," he said, and he agrees with trade negotiators' oft-repeated maxim: nothing is decided until everything is decided. Lighthizer "is going to say no until he can't any more," Gomez told International Trade Today during a brief interview at the Capitol on July 16.

Gomez describes where the two sides are as the "dancing phase." He declined to share what the Democrats have asked for on biologic drugs, one of the more discrete issues with the text. The text calls for a 10-year exclusivity period, up from eight in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Working Group member Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., has introduced a bill that would reduce the biologics exclusivity period in U.S. law from 12 years to five years. In past Congresses, she sought to reduce it to seven years.

"We're not going to be revealing what we're asking for the public, for folks to consume and then to shoot at. The minute we say, 'Oh, we asked for this,' then a thousand lobbyists descend on Capitol Hill to squeeze members to push back against it," Gomez said.

The working group will meet this week and next week with Lighthizer, and then staff will continue discussions through August. Gomez said the working group will "be meeting with stakeholders, having side conversations" during the five-week break.

Gomez said he doesn't know what domestic priority might be paired with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, as the new NAFTA is called -- New Democrats urge that infrastructure, minimum wage or a job skills initiative be linked to the vote. "Usually on tough votes you need to get sweeteners for different people to make it a little easier for them," Gomez said. "I wouldn't be surprised, but I don't know what it is."

Gomez said he wants Democrats to be able to replace NAFTA by ratifying a new deal. "We need something better than NAFTA, and I hope USMCA is the final vehicle. But we'll see," he said.