President Trump
was in Milwaukee last Friday where he spoke at Derco Aerospace, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. Yes, it was a USMCA speech, but like many of the president’s speeches it was a full-throated list of the achievements of his administration. It covered a lot of territory, from the soaring Dow Jones index to the high levels of employment – the unemployment rate in Wisconsin is at 2.8 percent – and including the Salute to America, the Independence Day celebration. There was, in fact, a clear connection between his hosts for the Milwaukee event and the Salute to America. That event included flyovers by Navy aviators in F-35 Lightning IIs, made by Lockheed Martin.
On the White House website, the President’s remarks in Milwaukee are described as a speech in support of USMCA – the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. It certainly was that, and, in a moment, we’ll share a few paragraphs on this new North American trade agreement.
Really, though, the central theme was what President Trump sees as the rejuvenation of American manufacturing. These two sentences make that point:
We’re here today to celebrate the triumphant return of American manufacturing.
And then:
We’re proudly defending our most important national resource: the American worker.
And, as he reiterated last week in Milwaukee, he believes NAFTA contributed significantly to the earlier erosion of U.S. manufacturing. In President Trump’s words:
As a candidate for President, I also promised to replace the disaster known as NAFTA. Since NAFTA’s adoption, the United States was losing jobs and losing plants like nobody ever lost before.
Then he turned to USMCA:
That’s why we’re replacing NAFTA with the brand new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. The USMCA will be the most modern, cutting edge trade agreement in history, with the strongest protections for the American worker ever put in any trade agreement. And that was the single most important thing to me. …
By ratifying the USMCA, Mexico has now committed to be the toughest and have the toughest labor provisions, the highest environmental standards, and the most comprehensive enforcement provisions ever implemented in a trade agreement – ever. …
Once fully implemented, the USMCA will bring up to 600,000 jobs to our shores. And it’s probably going to be over 1.2 million.
On behalf of our nation’s loyal, hardworking citizens, I’m calling on Congress to pass USMCA and send it to my desk immediately for signature.
Well, you get the idea.