Brian Pomper Quoted in Inside U.S. Trade on What’s Needed to Advance the USMCA Agreement

Inside U.S. Trade has quoted Akin Gump public law and policy practice co-head Brian Pomper in the article “Mexican ambassador: U.S. must be clearer about USMCA enforcement requests.” Pomper spoke at a recent Georgetown Law School event looking at the future of the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA).

The article reports that Mexico’s ambassador to Washington defended labor reform legislation expected to pass the Mexican Senate this week—and required by the trade deal—as sufficient to ease U.S. concerns with her country’s labor compliance. She also called on Democrats to be clearer about what they need to back the deal.

Pomper said he sees three things that must happen before the trade deal can advance. First, he said, “Democrats have to agree on what they want,” which is going to take some time. He cited the “May 10 Agreement” negotiations in 2007, in which there was “a clear understanding of the various things that Democrats wanted” and it “still took seven months to negotiate.”

Pomper also said that, while he was not sure to what degree House Democrats would back a labor cooperation mechanism proposed in the Senate, “it is a useful exercise in trying to move the ball forward.” A resolution to the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs must be reached, he noted, contending the deal will not pass on Capitol Hill until all retaliatory tariffs are also removed.

Finally, Pomper argued that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will have to come up with an enforcement solution, including possibly “subjecting the United States to binding dispute settlement.” The “current strategy” of using Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, he added, “is not going to work.”

In a separate article about the Georgetown Law School event, “Former Hill staffers: Slim chance of USMCA’s passage this year,” Pomper said that, while many Democrats would like to get a deal passed, “the question is ‘Does the President meet them [halfway]?” He put the chances of the deal’s passage before Congress’s August recess at 25 percent.

Pomper added, it will ultimately be “a political question,” dependent on whether the President has the “patience” to engage with congressional Democrats in negotiating changes or additions to the USMCA.