Congress has the votes to pass USMCA, US Chamber CEO says
U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue said Tuesday that the split Congress has the votes to pass the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement.
"It would give us a great step forward," Donohue told CNBC, adding that Congress has "enough votes to do it right now."
Donohue told FOX Business' Stuart Varney on July 25 that the USMCA would be "fixed by the September timeframe" and would have Democrats on board.
"There's very good spirit between the people that are doing it because this is an unbelievable agreement," Donohue said, adding that "it’s $4 billion a day of trade between the United States and Canada and Mexico – they are our largest trading partners."
A few weeks earlier, White House adviser Marc Short told FOX Business that he is optimistic the deal will come together.
"We think that it has the votes," Short told Maria Bartiromo on July 11. "The reality is that there are 31 congressional Democrats residing in districts that Donald Trump won in 2016. But more importantly, those are districts that create an enormous number of manufacturing jobs in the auto industry or agriculture jobs because we've now provided ... additional access to dairy farms in Wisconsin, in Minnesota."
Both chambers of Congress will be back in session in September after the August recess.
Ironically, Mexico ratified the deal in June, while the U.S. Congress has not passed the agreement that President Trump has often touted.
"It means foreign investment in Mexico, it means jobs in Mexico, it means guaranteeing trade of the merchandise that we produce in the United States," Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at the time of ratification.
Meanwhile, the Missouri Farm Bureau published a video of farmers touting the USMCA to the tune of the hit song "YMCA" on Aug. 30.
"Nancy, we know you're the woman who can get this deal through Congress," the farmers chant.