Richard Neal

Mr. NEAL

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. So on this occasion, Mr. Speaker, we conclude after 14 months of negotiating a hemispheric trade agreement--no small matter and no small accomplishment. It included a visit with the delegation to Mexico to meet with the President of Mexico, President Lopez Obrador. It included a delegation that visited Prime Minister Trudeau in Canada and intense negotiations in both countries, and I think it is fair to say that the conversations in both countries were indeed very spirited. But before I go to more of the specifics, we would not have gotten here without some very important and critical moments of focused and diligent work by Members of the House and the staff that got us to where we are today. First, an acknowledgment to Speaker Pelosi, who from day one said that the game plan is to get to yes. Her leadership to get the deal across the line, I think, was matched almost by her top trade adviser, Katherine Monge. Let me thank the working group members, Trade Subcommittee Chairman Blumenauer and his staff Laura Thrift and David Skillman; Representative Thompson and his staff, Jennifer Goedke; Representative Larson and his staff, Scott Stephanou; Representative Terri Sewell and her staff, Rob Nuttall; Representative Jim Gomez and his staff, Sam Negatu; Representative Rosa DeLauro and her staff, Jack Spasiano; Representative Schakowsky and her staff, Syd Terry and Osaremen Okolo; and Representative Suzanne Bonamici and her staff, Allison Smith. I want to thank the House Legislative Counsel, Mark Synnes and Kalyani Parthasarathy for their expertise, creativity, and many hours of hard and good work with our staff to prepare this legislation that is more than 200 pages long. They represent the very best of this institution's professionalism. For the support of colleagues and staff that I received from the diplomatic corps in Mexico City and Ottawa, we should express our gratitude as well to Ms. Elizabeth Hoffman at our Embassy in Mexico City for her extraordinary talents and efforts to support our attempts as we got to yes. I have great confidence and belief in the staff members at the Ways and Means Committee, and, yes, on both sides. So I want to thank my committee staff who have worked tirelessly on this agreement: Chief Trade Counsel and staff director of the Trade Subcommittee, Katherine Tai, who led us through the process along with her staff, Keigan Mull, Julia Friedman, Katie White, Alexandra Whittaker, John Catalfamo, and Kate Connor Linton. They were supported by a cast of very bright fellows and interns, Brishailah Brown, Chenoa Lee, and Tiffany Venmahavong. I also want to thank our colleagues across the aisle. Especially I want to acknowledge today the role that Ambassador Robert Lighthizer played in this. There is something to be said for the experience of Capitol Hill and having been a former staff member. Time and again we thought we weren't going to get to where we wanted to be. And there were some moments, I would say, of incendiary commentary back and forth. Though there were many threats to leave the negotiation, it never materialized because a long walk through this Capitol can solve a lot of challenges. Mr. Brady was invaluable as well, and his committee staff, Angela Ellard, Josh Snead, Blake Harden, and David Giordano all played a very important role here. This really is a bipartisan agreement, and I hope and expect that the challenges to USMCA will allow H.R. 5430 to enjoy broad, bipartisan support. I certainly am urging support for this because of the following: it bolsters workers' rights; it corrects earlier Trump administration backsliding on environmental obligations to get us to this trade agreement; it eliminated many big giveaways to companies that would have locked in high medicine prices, and it preserves Congress' freedom to legislate to bring those prices down; and it incorporates the strongest enforcement mechanisms, including specifically enhanced mechanisms for enforcing labor rights in any U.S. trade agreement. There are three titles that are devoted to the United States Government and our role: monitoring and enforcement of USMCA partners' obligations, monitoring and enforcement of USMCA partners' environmental obligations, and more than $843 million over 4 years that will be dedicated to monitoring and enforcement of labor and environmental obligations, including funds for education and training of workers and inspectors. We would not have gotten here today, however, without the important considerations of organized labor and the honorable men and women of the AFL/CIO and the Teamsters. We had broad support by including them in the negotiation and the discussions. This agreement is much the better for it, but it also is the signature accomplishment for all of us who had a chance to participate in it. Every once in a while, Mr. Speaker, you get to participate in these it-will-never-happen moments, and I believe that this indeed is one of them. So we also thank the NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, American Chemistry Council, Association for Accessible Medicines, Coalition of Services Industries, Farmers for Free Trade, Information Technology Industry, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Council of Textiles Organizations, The Software Alliance, and, indeed, many others. I hope that this will serve as a template going forward for the two sides to reach a combination on many of the priorities that expire this year that we will include next year. But, also, I think it is an example of when men and women in this institution of goodwill--not just in the season--but men and women of goodwill can find common occurrence and common ground on an issue, in the end, that is really important to all members of the American family. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, this is really a happy moment for me to acknowledge the work that the gentleman from California (Mr. Gomez) did on behalf of labor rights. He stood up in the working group on behalf of the working people, and I think that he considerably shifted this argument in their direction. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Gomez). (Mr. GOMEZ asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Mrs. Fletcher), who is very capable.

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Stanton).

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Judy Chu), another invaluable member of the Committee on Ways and Means whose knowledge about southern California is very important to all of us.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close.

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), a very good friend of mine.

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), the chairman of the Trade Subcommittee, who also made an invaluable effort in terms of the working group that assembled the document that we will vote on this afternoon.

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis), whose legendary work on behalf of America is well known to all.

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Brindisi), a very accomplished gentleman.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis), a very capable Congresswoman.

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Dingell), a very capable Member of the House.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), my friend.

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), a formidable negotiator and a very important member of the Trade Working Group.

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gonzalez).

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, we consider it a bit of a miracle that the gentleman did not show up with his charts. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson), whose invaluable work on the committee and a steady hand all of the time is very much appreciated.

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. Craig), who I can assure everybody was an assertive advocate for this agreement.

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Allred), a courageous congressman.

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici), an important advocate of environmental issues as a member of the Trade Working Group.

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I am delighted to stand in support of H.R. 5430, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement Implementation Act. The legislation we are considering today is the result of almost 14 months of negotiations between House Democrats and Ambassador Lighthizer, and I am very proud of the outcome that we have reached. As a result of these months of work, the USMCA is a transformative agreement that creates a new high-water mark for U.S. trade deals going forward. When we assumed the majority this year, we were asked to consider a renegotiated NAFTA that had structural flaws in a key number of areas: enforcement, labor rights, environment, and access to medicines. Let me start with enforcement, which was the crux of this agreement. As I have noted many times over the past year, I did not vote for the original NAFTA. The chief reason was the lack of enforceability mechanisms. During these past 25 years, we have seen the shortcomings of the original agreement, much of which comes down to a lack of enforcement, in my view. House Democrats, working with Ambassador Lighthizer, fixed many of those issues. The improvements to the USMCA that we negotiated finally make the agreement enforceable by preventing a country from being able to block the formation of a dispute settlement panel. On labor, our trade agreements, in many cases, have failed American workers. NAFTA has been symbolic of our broken promises to these workers. Over 25 years of the NAFTA, there have been 39 petitions filed documenting the exploitation of workers and zero enforcement actions taken to remedy those violations. In close partnership with labor unions and with the robust support of Ways and Means Democrats, support from Republicans, we negotiated improvements to the rules and to our monitoring regime, and we established a new enforcement mechanism. On the rules, we strengthened certain provisions and addressed obstacles to enforcement in many others. On monitoring, for the first time we have created a proactive monitoring regime for labor obligations in a trade agreement. The implementing bill establishes an Interagency Labor Committee that will actively monitor Mexico's compliance, and report back to Congress. On enforcement, we negotiated a historic mechanism never included in a trade agreement before. As a result of Democratic efforts, we will now have a facility-specific, rapid-response mechanism to address violations of key labor obligations. We have made great improvements to environmental provisions. The USMCA will now include the highest environmental standards of any trade agreement in history and will include a new customs verification agreement to enhance enforcement. The implementing bill, and I hope our colleagues in this Chamber will hear this, also secures more than $600 million in funding for environmental problems in the NAFTA region and reauthorizes the North American Development Bank. Through the dedication of the working group members, the Trade Subcommittee members, we also secured important changes to USMCA that preserve Congress' ability to change U.S. law to address the crisis we face with respect to high prescription drug prices. These changes set a new standard for U.S. trade agreements, and demonstrate that trade agreements can achieve broad, bipartisan support if they empower workers, protect patients, provide access to affordable healthcare, and improve our shared environment. I am proud of what we did here. After 14 months of negotiating on every conceivable front, we have improved the old NAFTA. Madam Speaker, I want to remind our colleagues today, if they decide that they are not going to vote for this piece of legislation in front of us, that is up to them. But one thing they cannot say is, this is not much better than what we have had in the past. So the options here are clear: you can vote for what we have negotiated or you can embrace the status quo. And if this fails today, that is precisely what you are doing: embracing the status quo. This agreement, based upon the painstaking efforts of members of the committee and Ambassador Lighthizer, was done with full transparency. No surprises are in this legislation. I hope that today we can say at the end of the time limits that this was a successful negotiation of the largest trade agreement in American history, a hemispheric agreement that I think we can stand in support of with great pride today. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Buffalo, New York (Mr. Higgins).

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Delgado), a very capable Congressman and my neighbor.

Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Cuellar), a real champion of this agreement.