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USMCA: NAWG meets with Dems; GOP with Trump

The CEO of the National Wheat Growers Association says many Democrats support the agriculture provisions of the USMCA. Chandler Goule tells Brownfield they met with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s staff who urged NAWG, and all ag groups, to meet with freshmen House members to ensure them about the enforcement provisions of the new agreement, “What I think there really needs to be is just an education campaign on what the new enforcement mechanism in USMCA looks like. The other thing that kept coming up was 232 (steel and aluminum) tariffs. That came up in every single meeting,” says Chandler Goule.

He says the aluminum and steel tariffs on Canada and Mexico, which Trump initially said he would remove, are standing in the way of USMCA ratification,

“You’ve got Democrats AND some Republicans saying, look, the administration has got to make a move in good faith to show this is the direction they want to go, I think, before we’re going to dislodge this agreement. It will have to come out of the House first because it is a revenue bill.”

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley met with the president Thursday to urge the lifting of those tariffs. Yet, President Trump has indicated he now wants Congress to pass the USMCA first before the tariffs are repealed. And Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has suggested quotas in place of tariffs, which Canada and Mexico reportedly do not want.

NAWG also met with Ways and Means committee members about the USMCA this week and some freshmen lawmakers.