On February 27, under the Chairmanship of Richard Neal, a Democrat from Massachusetts, the House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on U.S.-China Trade. There was just one witness, the U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador Robert Lighthizer.
Chairman Neal set the stage in his opening remarks, taking note of the $250 billion in U.S. imports from China that are now subject to U.S. tariffs and the $110 billion in U.S. exports to China that are being hit with the tariffs China has implemented in retaliation. The ping-pong discourse over U.S.-China trade went on for nearly three hours. There was a lot of substance in it, and we expect to return to that hearing several times in the days ahead, with perspective on the concerns expressed by different members of the committee from different parts of the country.
At various points in the hearing, however, one member or another mentioned the NAFTA replacement, USMCA. And on each occasion, Ambassador Lighthizer said, in effect, that Congressional passage of USMCA was essential to a successful American trade policy. The last question of the hearing was from Representative Drew Ferguson, a Republican from Georgia. Ambassador Lighthizer's response to that question was the source for today's featured quoted. Here is more from that exchange.
MR. FERGUSON:
Can you speak to the importance of getting the USMCA deal done on the heels of the South Korean deal and then bringing Japan into the fold and then moving to the Europeans?
AMBASSADOR LIGHTHIZER
:
I said this at one point and I'll say it again: That there is no trade program in the United States if we don't pass USMCA. There just isn't one. What it says is we don't have a consensus, and that we don't want to stand up for our workers and our farmers and our ranchers. I think there is no less than that at stake.
We have an agreement [USMCA]. It's clearly better than its predecessor, there's no question. It's 1.3 trillion dollars worth of business; millions and millions of people are affected, and it just has to pass.
If it doesn't, you have no credibility at all with China, and you will have no credibility on any deals with your other trading partners. I have members come to me - I tell you, every day I talk to two or three members, just literally every day - and it's always constructive, ... and they have ideas and thoughts, and all this, and I always, in the back of my head, think: if we don't pass USMCA, just don't bother. Just sit down and just say we'll just wait a few years before we say anything.
That was perhaps the most forceful version of something Ambassador Lighthizer had said two or three times earlier in the hearing. Another member who specifically asked the USTR about USMCA was Rep. Ron Estes, a Republican from Kansas. In answering him, Ambassador Lighthizer said:
That [USMCA] is our top priority. If the Congress doesn't see fit to pass that, then everything else we're talking about is kind of like a footnote.
[Failure to pass USMCA] will mean we can't do trade deals and we're not going to be in the trade space.
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