Posted on 01/01/2020 7:57:36 AM PST by Sheapdog
On December 19, 2019, by a vote of 385 Yeas to 41 Nays, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the United-States-Mexico-Canada Agreement Implementation Act (H.R. 5430). If passed by the U.S. Senate and signed into law, this 239-page bill would both approve and implement the now 2,410-page United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which is intended to replace the original 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
As The New American has previously covered (here, here, and here), there are many problems with the USMCA that outweigh any potential economic benefits — mainly how it would erode America’s national sovereignty in favor of regional integration. After a year of back-and-forth negotiations with the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and the Trump Administration, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats held a press conference, on October 10, 2019, to announce that new changes had been made to the USMCA, thus clearing a path for the Democrats to support the trade scheme. Simultaneously as Pelosi held her press conference, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, and Mexico’s Deputy Foreign Minister Jesús Seade Kuri held a ceremony in Mexico City, where they signed the Protocol of Amendment to the USMCA – a 27-page document of all the changes agreed to by House Democrats.
During her remarks, prior to signing the Protocol of Amendment, Freeland, who belongs to Canada’s Liberal Party and who had served as Canada’s principle negotiator on the agreement, enthusiastically described the USMCA, or CUSMA as the Canadian government calls it for Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, as a “progressive trade agreement.” Even prior to the changes added by House Democrats, Freeland had also previously described the integration scheme as a “very progressive agreement.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thenewamerican.com ...
The best breakdown of parts of USMCA I have found if one opens and reads the full article.
So are your observations positive or negative?
HERE’s WHAT THE USMCA SAYS ABOUT IMMIGRATION AND MIGRANT LABOR:
Migrant Workers
According to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), a total of 396,579 apprehensions were made of people attempting to cross the U.S. southern border with Mexico in fiscal year 2018. That number has more than doubled in 2019. Approximately 851,000 illegal border crossers were been taken into custody by the CBP in fiscal year 2019, which ran from October 1, 2018 to September 30, 2019. There is no way to gauge the number of people who succeed at illegally crossing the Southwest border each year. While most cited immigration experts believe that there are around 11 million illegal aliens residing in the United States, one study from Yale University published in June 2018, estimated that were as many as 22.1 million illegal migrants living in the United States in 2016. The actual numbers could be even higher and may increase even further, due in part to certain provisions in the USMCA.
The USMCA’s labor chapter (Chapter 23), as The New American has also previously reported, could serve as a beachhead for a cross-border migration invasion similar to that experienced in the European Union. In language that is virtually identical to that found in the TPP, Article 15.5 of Chapter 15 of the USMCA states: “No party shall adopt or maintain ... a measure that ... imposes a limitation on ... the total number of natural persons that may be employed in a particular financial service sector or that a financial institution or cross-border service supplier may employ ... in the form of numerical quotas or the requirement of an economic needs test.” This opens the door for Mexico and the current radical socialist government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador or for a Mexican, a Canadian, or even a U.S.-based company to sue the U.S. government for restricting the number of employees that such a company would want to bring across the border into the United States.
As well, provisions from USMCA’s Chapters 15 and 23 have the potential to undermine President Trump’s border security measures and further open our nation’s borders. Article 23.8 on “Migrant Workers” requires each country to “ensure that migrant workers are protected under its labor laws, whether they are nationals or non-nationals” of the country they are residing in. The term “non-nationals” could easily apply to not just undocumented aliens or “Dreamers” from Mexico, but also to those illegal migrants arriving from the caravans originating in Central American countries such as Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, none of which are parties of the USMCA. Furthermore, such provisions and verbiage could be used in aiding Democratic lawmakers to retain President Obama’s unconstitutional executive action for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, commonly known as DACA. In fact, any adjudication on this matter could very well fall under the judicial jurisdiction of a USMCA panel for dispute settlement, rather than under the legal control of the United States. (More about these dispute settlement panels later).
Seems to have a lot of loop holes that could be exploited to put our nation under a trans national environmental agency restrictions.
On the surface it speaks of co operation but then it creates two (!) Environmental oversite agencies to enforce.
I give it a thumbs down. America is one of the cleanest nations in the world, we have proven the responsibility to effectively curb pollution, Why han the keys to the car to drunken bums?
USMCA inexcusably gave up our sovereignty in some ways worse than the original NAFTA BEFORE the Dems in Congress pulled it more to the left.
Should never have been sanctioned or pushed by this admin at all. Makes me sick whenever Trump touts it as a “success”. It is a national sellout.
(And yeah, Trump is better than anyone else we’ve had since Reagan, who had his own failures on illegal immigration, or that we could have got in 2016.)
NAFTA was described by candidate Trump as the worst trade deal ever negotiated.
So USMCA may well be the second worst trade deal ever negotiated.
Everyone should read this:
“Consistent with other globalist schemes, the USMCA follows the “rules-based system” of compliance to international authorities such as the World Trade Organization, International Labor Organization, a plethora of United Nations conventions including the Law of Sea treaty, and the furtherance of “sustainable development,” which is mentioned no less than six times in the environment chapter.
One example of the USMCA’s complete subordination to international authority can be found in Article 24.18 of the new environment chapter, regarding fisheries, which states in part:
3. Each Party shall base its fisheries management system on the best scientific evidence available and on internationally recognized best practices for fisheries management and conservation as reflected in the relevant provisions of international instruments aimed at ensuring the sustainable use and conservation of marine species.
The footnote below for that section defines what exactly those “international instruments” are, stating:
These instruments include, among others, and as they may apply, United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the United Nations Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of December 1982 relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, done at New York, December 4, 1995 (UN Fish Stocks Agreement), the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, the 1993 FAO Agreement to Promote Compliance with International Conservation and Management Measures by Fishing Vessels on the High Seas (Compliance Agreement), done at Rome, November 24, 1993, the 2001 FAO International Plan of Action to Prevent, Deter, and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU Fishing), and the 2009 Agreement on Port State Measures to Prevent, Deter, and Eliminate IUU Fishing.
Toward a North American Union
In a bold step toward a potential North American Union, the USMCA establishes a new governing international bureaucracy. Chapter 30 of the agreement establishes the creation of a Free Trade Commission as a regional governing bureaucracy overseeing various lower regional committees. Article 30, section 1, of the agreement states, “The Parties hereby establish a Free Trade Commission, composed of government representatives of each Party at the level of Ministers or their designees.” Article 30, section 2, outlines the various functions and powers of the Free Trade Commission as follows:
1. The Commission shall:
(a) consider matters relating to the implementation or operation of this
Agreement;
(b) consider proposals to amend or modify this Agreement;
(c) supervise the work of committees, working groups, and other subsidiary
bodies established under this Agreement;
(d) consider ways to further enhance trade and investment between the Parties;
(e) adopt and update the Rules of Procedure and Code of conduct ; and
(f) review the roster established under Article 31.8 (Roster and Qualifications
of Panelists) every three years and, when appropriate, constitute a new
roster.
The Free Trade Commission requires the United States, Mexico, and Canada to “establish and oversee a Secretariat comprising national Sections.” All three countries will be responsible for establishing and maintaining a “permanent office of its Section and be responsible for its operation and costs.” The role of the Secretariat will be to assist and promote the work of the Commission, provide administrative assistance to any dispute-settlement panels, and to cover the costs and expenses for panelists, assistants, and experts involved in a dispute-settlement proceeding.
Beneath the Free Trade Commission, the USMCA authorizes all three countries to establish the following subordinate committees:
• Committee on Agricultural Trade,
• Committee on Rules of Origin and Origin Procedures,
• Committee on Textile and Apparel Trade Matters,
• Customs and Trade Facilitation Committee,
• Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade,
• Committee on Government Procurement,
• Committee on Transportation Services,
• Committee on Financial Services,
• Committee on Telecommunications,
• Committee on Intellectual Property Rights,
• Committee on State-Owned Enterprises and Designated Monopolies,
• Environment Committee,
• Committee on SME (Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises) Issues,
• North American Competitiveness Committee,
• Committee on Good Regulatory Practices, and an
• Advisory Committee on Private Commercial Disputes
The specific functions for each committee are outlined in their corresponding chapters. Nevertheless, all of these committees are to be comprised of representatives from the governments of all three countries. The committees are responsible for overseeing and helping to implement the agreement in their particular area. They will also be tasked with addressing any issues that arise under their area.
Committees will meet regularly or on an annual basis, and they are supposed to help encourage or foster greater cooperation and trade among all three countries in their given areas. Committees can also propose changes or revisions to the chapter in the agreement that corresponds to their area. All of the committees’ work, discussions, findings, and recommendations are to be submitted to the Free Trade Commission for consideration.
And much like the TPP Commission, the Free Trade Commission can make changes to the USMCA without the consent of Congress. In fact, the agreement completely undermines Congress’ Constitutional Article I, Section 8 power to regulate trade with foreign nations, such as Mexico and Canada, and to impose tariffs on them should the need arise, as in the case of national security.
The Free Trade Commission would also have the power to consider or adopt any changes to a country’s scheduled tariff commitments by accelerating the elimination of tariffs or by making “adjustments to the Tariff Preferential Levels established in Chapter 6 (Textile and Apparel Goods).””
And that’s only part of the story.
2,410 page agreement PLUS a 239 page bill PLUS a 27 page supplement is now the USMCA.
I guarantee you that not a single congress critter has read the clift notes version, let alone the entire bill and agreement.
They voted and haven't got a clue what is written into the 2,676 pages of legalize and what can be slipped in when no one is looking.
Before the august body called the senate gets around to voting on it, the deep state writers could slide all kinds of additional crap in there and who would ever know it.
If an fbi agent can change a memo from the cia to the fisa court and have it go unnoticed for years, why can't a gremlin change a couple of 'noes' to 'yes' and restructure the entire meaning of critical parts of the agreement.
I trust no one in the swamp.
“...the Free Trade Commission can make changes to the USMCA without the consent of Congress. In fact, the agreement completely undermines Congress’ Constitutional Article I, Section 8 power to regulate trade with foreign nations, such as Mexico and Canada, and to impose tariffs on them should the need arise, as in the case of national security.”
Anti-sovereignty pos, this is. Trump’s team needs a serious f’ing wake up call on this. Or, does he secretly plan to veto it?
I do hope Trump is what we need him to be. This one will be telling.
USMCA could be providing the democrat governors with the arrogance to demand the collection of firearms via their liberal interpretation of WTO rules.
Disgusting. This bill needs to die - but who is there to kill it?
Ha—not surprising.
Just ask yourself, why would democrats support this bill? That should be all you need to know.
Yeah, “more Democrat” is hardly the answer here—or anywhere!
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