Top business groups working with U.S. trade representatives on a renegotiated NAFTA say the White House is courting Democrats to approve a new deal on Capitol Hill.
Time is running out for negotiators from the United States, Canada and Mexico to reach an agreement in time for it to be approved by Congress, and business groups, including the U.S. auto industry, still have significant concerns with the deal that’s in the works.
In a recent phone call with U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said that the trade office would court Democrats to support the plan, needs majority approval from both houses of Congress.
Lighthizer told Donohue he would also get the support of a major labor group, the AFL-CIO.
AFL-CIO trade policy specialist Celeste Drake said the deal “is not yet in a place where it would need to be to garner labor's support,” but the group continues to have “meaningful conversations” with trade officials.
The United States Trade Representative’s office did not responded to request for comment Friday.
Republicans control both chambers of Congress.But coalitions of lawmakers from both parties were crucial to getting Congress to initially approve NAFTA in 1993. In the House that year, 132 Republicans joined 102 Democrats to approve the pact. In the Senate, 34 Republicans and 27 Democrats approved.
“Lighthizer believes he can build a bipartisan coalition with a bunch of Democrats who have never voted for trade agreements backing it,” John Murphy, director of the chamber's international trade advocacy, told a gathering of Texas business leaders in Washington Thursday.
Lighthizer was expected to meet with a coalition of business minded Democrats on Capitol Hill this month, but rescheduled the meeting, drawing complaints from the group, according to Inside U.S. Trade.
President Donald Trump has threatened to abandon NAFTA altogether if negotiators can’t reach an agreement. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday that "conversations are ongoing" about the administration's NAFTA strategy.
Texas business leaders are eager for Washington to approve a new NAFTA.
An estimated one million Texas jobs are tied to the deal, and Mexico is the state's biggest trading partner.
The Texas Association of Business, which held its annual legislative summit in Washington this week, is also courting Democrats to speed along the process.
“It’s a political reality that we have to look at what votes are going to be necessary to get a trade agreement,” TAB President Jeff Moseley told the Star-Telegram Thursday. “[T]his president received grassroots labor support in Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.”
Texas Democratic Reps. Joaquin Castro and Beto O’Rourke, both active supporters of the trade agreement, spoke at TAB’s meeting in D.C. this week. They've called for changes to beef up the agreement's worker protections.
Moseley pointed to NAFTA’s origins with support from both parties as a potential framework for luring Democrats, which often align with labor interests.
“[Former President George] H.W. Bush had the idea and the concept of a trade [deal], but it’s [Bill] Clinton that closed it, and Clinton had to work to get Democratic votes, which included an office for labor and an office for environment,” said Moseley.
“We’ve opened up communication with the Texas AFL-CIO… If there’s an opportunity for us to bring in new friends, we’re very open and willing to do that,” he added.
Texas AFL-CIO President Rick Levy said Friday that his group believes NAFTA “has been really bad for Texas and Texas workers.”
But, Levy said he’d had positive meetings with TAB, and Texas AFL-CIO is not calling for NAFTA to go away altogether.
In Washington, business groups have been urging Trump to consider the needs of the Republican-leaning states that supported him in the 2016 election. Lawmakers from states with large agriculture industries say they fear abandoning the deal could be catastrophic to farmers.
“One of the success stories has been senators and governors, particularly from red states, going in to the White House and trying to keep things on an even keel, pushing back against withdrawal threats and other issues,” said Murphy.
Among the aspects worrying the business community, Murphy said the White House wants a major increase in the percent of auto parts that must be made in North America.
“What we hear from the [auto] companies is that if they’re confronted with this highly restrictive set of rules… [they] will just decide not to trade under NAFTA rules,” said Murphy. “You could wind up seeing less manufacturing in the U.S.”
General Motors' assembly plant in Arlington employs 4,250 people.
GM spokesman Pat Morrissey said in a statement this month that “significant changes” to that rule “could alter competitiveness of the North American auto industry.”
Murphy said business groups were also concerned about the potential inclusion of a “sunset” provision, which would make it difficult for businesses to plan future investments, and proposed a weakening of the enforcement mechanism for dispute settlements.
"The administration is very committed to the sunset clause still," he said. "There might be a trigger tired to the trade deficit, that if there’s a trade deficit five years from now the agreement automatically goes away."
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott mentioned those same concerns in a letter to Trump earlier this month.
“It’s a tough political balancing act,” said Murphy. “You have the oil and gas sector, railroads fighting [the renegotiated deal] just on the basis of [investor-state dispute settlement], and there’s three or four other issues that are least as big.”
Murphy added: “My sense meeting with the negotiating teams over the past 10 days or so is that they’re actually quite a lot further away from concluding this than the high level message that you hear from the trade ministers.”
Andrea Drusch: adrusch@mcclatchydc.com