Sen. Toomey Says He Doesn't Know If Republicans Will Remain a Party for Free Trade
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., the strongest free trade advocate in the Senate, said he doesn't know if Republicans will return to their traditional position as pro-free trade. In response to a question from the audience at the American Enterprise Institute Dec. 19, he said it depends on whether President Donald Trump is re-elected in 2020.
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“A re-election will be seen as a validation of all of the President's policy positions,” Toomey said. “Interestingly, because American politics is so partisan ... support for trade is much higher among Democrats than it's ever been,” because Democrats recognize Trump as anti-trade, and thus trade must be good.
Toomey plans to vote against the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and he criticizes the ways both the U.S. trade representative and House Democrats changed NAFTA to appease trade critics -- the end of investor-state dispute settlement, more managed trade in autos, the sunset clause. He also is upset about abandoning protections for biologic drugs in the pact, which he says is important to American pharmaceutical companies' future prosperity.
But of all the changes, it's the wage rate provision -- that aims to move more auto sector work to Canada and the U.S. -- that angers him most. “We've had administration officials come into the Republican senators' lunch and make the argument that we're better off ... if we can force find a way to raise their costs of their production, because then they can't compete with us as well,” he said. “That is a complete misunderstanding of the merits and benefits of trade. Let's not accept that premise.”
Toomey said he believes the USMCA is not eligible for fast track, because Congress didn't have 30 days to consider the draft implementing bill before the first vote. But, he said, even if the Senate parliamentarian agreed with him, it wouldn't matter, because there are at least 60 votes in the Senate for passage.
But, in response to another audience question, Toomey did note a small victory he won in legislation that passed the Senate later that day. He attached a policy rider to the Commerce appropriations bill, that requires the department to release its auto Section 232 report within 30 days. There's already a law that Commerce has to release the report it produces on whether a given product is a threat to national security, but no timeline is given in Section 232 of the law.
Once he's able to read the report about the threat of auto imports, he said, “it should shed some light on the thought process that led to this conclusion.”