The U.S. government has certified almost one million American jobs as lost to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), with more outsourced to Mexico every week. Almost 1,500 of those jobs were lost from right here in Arizona. Our organizations, Progressive Democrats of America & Alliance for Retired Americans, have been fighting job-killing trade deals for years.
NAFTA must be replaced. But the revised deal that President Trump signed last year would not stop NAFTA’s ongoing job outsourcing. And even as Trump escalates his rhetoric about lowering drug prices, the fact is that he allowed Big Pharma to rig his NAFTA deal with new monopoly rights to charge consumers more.
Congressional Democrats, unions, environmentalists, family farmers, and more are united in ensuring no vote happens on a new NAFTA unless it is fixed. After two decades of Americans suffering from NAFTA’s damage, we must get it right.
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The time has come for Trump to decide if he’ll work with Congress to fix NAFTA.
As a candidate in 2016, Trump pledged to renegotiate NAFTA to stop job outsourcing. While the revised deal has some improvements, its labor, environmental, and enforcement terms are too weak to stop the outsourcing.
If the deal Trump signed is enacted, corporations will continue to move jobs to Mexico to pay workers less.
For example, in 2018 Chevy opened a new factory in Mexico, where workers are paid $1.58 per hour to make blazers sold here. U.S. workers making blazers a decade ago made more per hour than these workers earn per day. Unless NAFTA 2.0’s labor terms and their enforcement are greatly improved, this race-to-the-bottom outsourcing will continue.
Trump’s revised NAFTA doesn’t just fail to fix the problems of the original NAFTA — it actively makes matters worse for working people. NAFTA 2.0 includes new monopoly protections for pharmaceutical firms that protect them from generic competition so they can charge high medicine prices. Pharmaceutical firms are funding the corporate campaign to ram Trump’s NAFTA 2.0 through Congress in order to undermine Congress’ efforts to rein in drug prices.
Additionally, oil and gas corporations forced a loophole into the deal so they can attack environmental laws. The outrageous Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system — which allows corporations to demand unlimited taxpayer funds over claims that our environmental or health laws violate their NAFTA rights — was largely eliminated. But the revised NAFTA preserves ISDS for these big polluters to attack environmental policies.
To stop NAFTA’s ongoing damage, the deal Trump signed must be fixed before Congress votes on it. PDA and ARC join the nation’s mayors and numerous members of Congress in calling for a replacement for NAFTA. But this new pact must actually end NAFTA’s ongoing damage and do no further harm.
That is why we demand that NAFTA 2.0’s Big Pharma giveaways be eliminated, the loophole for Big Oil be closed, and the labor and environmental standards and their enforcement be significantly strengthened.
Over 100 congressional Democrats sent a letter to Trump demanding precisely these changes. For some reason, Rep. Tom O’Halleran was not among them. We urge Rep. O’Halleran and Sens. Martha McSally and Kyrsten Sinema to demand the much-needed improvements so that the final NAFTA 2.0 package really stops some of NAFTA’s ongoing damage. No deal should go to Congress for a vote until this is achieved.
If Trump works with congressional Democrats to improve the deal, Congress can pass a new deal that will help working people. But if Trump tries to force a vote before NAFTA is fixed, he’ll be responsible for more American jobs outsourced, lower wages and unaffordable medicines.
Phil Lopes is a former Arizona state representative and Henry Trejo belongs to the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans.
