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Keep NAFTA, withdraw from NAFTA, ratify USMCA all on table, Mick Mulvaney says at Milken Institute conference.

Bloomberg, Content provider

April 30, 2019

2 Min Read
AlexLMX / Thinkstock

by Justin Sink and Jenny Leonard

White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney raised the possibility that the existing NAFTA trade agreement could remain in effect if Democrats reject a replacement that the Trump administration negotiated with Canada and Mexico.

“You could stay status quo," Mulvaney said Tuesday at the Milken Institute’s conference in Los Angeles. “You could withdraw from NAFTA, which the president has talked about many, many times. Or you could go all the way back to the beginning and renegotiate from scratch with the Canadians and the Mexicans. I can assure you -- I think it’s fair to say that last thing is unlikely to happen.”

“Your real two Plan Bs are either NAFTA or withdraw from NAFTA,” he said.

The U.S., Canada and Mexico signed the successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement in November, after a year of negotiations to rewrite the 25-year-old pact. The president, however, has said for months that the existing NAFTA will be killed, either by Congress passing his USMCA deal or because Trump will withdraw the U.S. from the old agreement if Congress fails to approve the new deal.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has stressed that putting lawmakers in such a bind is “not a good idea.”

The White House hasn’t submitted legislation to Congress yet to implement the USMCA. The Democrat-controlled House would have to approve such legislation, and Pelosi and her caucus have signaled that multiple roadblocks -- including labor enforcement as well as drug pricing provisions -- need to be addressed within the deal before the administration can send the bill up for a vote.

Lawmakers in Canada and Mexico also still need to ratify the pact.

To contact the reporters on this story:

Justin Sink in Washington at [email protected];

Jenny Leonard in Washington at [email protected]

To contact the editors responsible for this story:

Alex Wayne at [email protected]

Justin Blum, Andrew Mayeda

© 2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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