There Will Be No USMCA Deal This Year

The Hill: Pelosi casts doubt on USMCA deal in 2019

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday cast doubt on the possibility of passing an updated North American trade deal by the end of 2019, a departure from her previous characterization of the deal as “imminent.”

“I’m not even sure if we came to an agreement today that it would be enough time to finish,” she said, referencing an end-of-year timeline many had hoped for the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer met with Pelosi and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) later on Thursday, but a final deal remained out of reach.

Neal said that of five outstanding issues, they had reached agreement on roughly half of them and would continue negotiations next week.

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Update #1: Pelosi backtracks on year-end trade deal optimism (Washington Examiner)
Update #2: Pelosi, White House Fail to Seal USMCA Deal in Crucial Meeting (Bloomberg)

WNU Editor: Everyone has come to terms with this agreement with the exception of the House Democrats. I hope I am wrong, but I sense that the House Democrats do not want to give President Trump this foreign policy "win", and may delay it until after the 2020 election. Their fous right now is on impeachment, and to delegitimize this President.

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