The Daily Signal - Ep. 308: A First Look at the USMCA Trade Deal

Episode Date: October 1, 2018

Is the new USMCA better than NAFTA? The Heritage Foundation's Tori Whiting joins us to discuss the new North American trade deal President Trump hawked Monday, and what the next steps are. Plus: Kanye West tells the truth about the left on "Saturday Night Live." We also cover these stories:--President Trump calls on FBI to "do a very comprehensive investigation" of allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh.--California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, vetoed legislation that would have required public universities in the state to offer abortion pills at campus clinics.--The restaurant where Sen. Ted Cruz was recently harassed by a mob of protesters is being forced to hire security.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, October 2nd. I'm Jenny Malta Bono. And I'm Kate Trinco. Today we're going to sit down with Tori Whiting at the Heritage Foundation to discuss the new trade deal that President Trump has announced. She'll unpack that for us. Plus, we're going to discuss how Kanye West did some truth-telling on S&L, but didn't make it to air. But first, we'll cover a few of the top headlines. President Donald Trump addressed the FBI investigation into his Supreme Court nominee,

Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the Rose Garden on Monday. He referred to the, quote, trauma that Kavanaugh has gone through since sexual assault allegations and cautioned against any kind of witch hunt from occurring. Trump alluded that he is open and willing to the FBI doing whatever they think is necessary to properly investigate the allegations

in the time frame allowed. Here is President Trump discussing it. I can tell you he's been treated horribly. He's a good man. He's a good man with a great family. I think he's been treated horribly. Lindsay Graham was, I thought, terrific the other day. And he brought up one point that is now being discussed by a lot of people.

And that's who is going to want to run for office, be in office, take an appointment of, not just Supreme Court. Since we're talking about Trump's Presser Monday, I just have to add this one clip. It just cracked me up. This is Trump addressing a question about Kavanaugh and drinking. I'm just saying, I'm not a drinker. I can honestly say I never had a beer in my life, okay? Right. It's one of my only good traits.

I don't drink. Whenever they're looking for something good, I say, never had a glass of alcohol. I've never had alcohol. I've just, you know, for whatever reason. Can you imagine if I had what a mess I'd be? Would I be the world's worst? But I never drank.

I never drank, okay? Self-aware Trump, definitely my favorite. No, I do love how he can poke fun at himself. It's a good, it's an endearing trait. Well, on a much more serious note, Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona sex crime prosecutor who questioned Dr. Christine Blazy Ford Thursday, issued a memo Monday analyzing Ford's case. She wrote, quote, in the legal context, here is my bottom line. A he said, she said case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that. Dr. Ford identified other witnesses to the event and those witnesses either refuted her. her allegations or failed to corroborate them. For the reasons discussed below, I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this

case based on the evidence before the committee." Mitchell's memo went on to detail variances in the details Ford had given in her different accounts about the incident. When asked about the Me Too movement and everything happening with Brett Kavanaugh, here's what Donald Trump Jr. had to say in an interview filmed last week with the Daily Mail TV. I got boys and I got girls. And when I see what's going on right now, it's scary for all things.

I mean, I wouldn't want my... Who are you scared most for? Your sons are your daughters? I mean, right now, I'd say my son. The other problem is that for the people who are real victims of these things, when it is so obviously political in cases like this, it really diminishes the real claims. While in remarks, Monday, President Trump addressed the new trade deal

between the U.S., Mexico and Canada, while taking a swipe at the North American Free Trade Agreement. great honor to announce that we have successfully completed negotiations on a brand new deal to terminate and replace NAFTA and the NAFTA trade agreements with an incredible new U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement called USMCA. Sort of just works. MCA. U.S.MCA. And that'll be the name, I guess, that 99% of the time will be here. USMCA has a good ring to it. I have long contended that NAFTA was perhaps the worst trade deal ever made. Since NAFTA's adoption, the United States racked up trade deficits totaling more

than $2 trillion, and it's a much higher number than that. With Canada and Mexico, it lost vast amounts of money and lost 4.1 million manufacturing jobs and one in four auto jobs. It was about 25% of our auto jobs even more than that. We'll unpack more about that trade deal in our interview with Heritage's Tory Whiting. California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat vetoed legislation Sunday that would have required public universities in the state to offer abortion pills at clinics on campus. Some California Democrats disagreed with the decision, which had it passed, would have made California the first state to require such medications be made available on campus. It would have required nearly $10 million to fund. Brown said that the bill was not necessary. Good news for babies

in California. However, it's California versus the feds again on a different topic. The Trump administration, of course, has moved to end net neutrality, a policy which effectively limited how much consumers could save by substantially narrowing what kinds of products could be offered. Now, California wants to bring net neutrality back. Attorney General Jeff Sessions isn't a fan, and the Justice Department has already sued California to prevent net neutrality from being enacted. Quote, once again, the California legislature has enacted an extreme and illegal state law attempting to frustrate federal policy, Sessions said in a statement. The Justice Department should not have to spend valuable time and resources to file this suit today,

but we have a duty to defend the prerogatives of the federal government and protect our constitutional order. The restaurant where Senator Ted Cruz and his wife were, where we, recently harassed by a mob of protesters is speaking out. Fiola Restaurant is still dealing with harassment and threats that strangers are making to their establishment. Fiola put out a statement saying that they do not discriminate against people's politics and treat all guests the same. The threats have been so constant, however, that the restaurant is being forced to hire security.

In a letter sent out to customers, the owner said, quote, the restaurant will be getting security guards for the time being to avoid similar instances. We are retraining the staff at all of our restaurant. on what to do in the event that this happens again. Next up, we're going to discuss USMCA. Liberals have pretty much cornered the market on 101-style podcasts that break down tough policy issues in the news. Until now, did you know that every week, Heritage Explains

intermingles personal stories, news clips, and facts from heritage experts to help explain some of today's hardest issues from a conservative perspective. Look for Heritage Explains on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts. So before we break out the champagne and start a chorus of USMCA, we're bringing the Heritage Foundation's Tori Whiting, who is the J. Van Andel trade economist to talk to us about this deal and why it matters. So, Tori, first off, what are some significant changes in this trade deal? How does it differ from the former agreement we had in place between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada? Well, the first thing to point out with this agreement is that despite the weeks and weeks of uncertainty about whether or not Canada was going to be involved in it, we do in fact have a trilateral renegotiation, which is a huge, huge accomplishment. You know, we were really worried that it was going to end up being bilateral, and that would cause a lot of disruption to supply chains.

Now, there are lots of changes in this agreement. It's almost 1,700 pages long, so it's going to take a lot of time for heritage analysts to get through. I bet you are really excited to read all 1700 pages. Well, luckily, I have a lot of great experts here at Heritage in different issue areas that are going to help kind of dig down into the details. But, you know, one of the biggest accomplishments I think that we're going to see in this is that the effort in which the administration took to modernize the new USMCA or NAFTA 2.0, however you want to refer to it.

And I think that that really helps us get into the 21st century in trade with things like intellectual property, digital trade, services, financial services, and all these new kind of 21st century types of products. Tori, what is the biggest benefit for these three countries being a part of such an agreement like this? Well, NAFTA in 1994 did a great thing where it created the largest free trade area in the world, one of the largest. And what that means is that it helped North America become a region where we were being

very, very competitive at lots of different areas of production, specifically manufacturing. And so moving this agreement forward, like I said before, in a trilateral way, really preserves that ecosystem that has been created over 25 years and can help our businesses, say automakers or other manufacturers, maintain their supply chains that make them so efficient so that we can export our products abroad. So, of course, one of the things that President Trump has made very clear is that he's interested in bringing jobs back to the United States, having more of a... robust manufacturing sector. I asked some of our followers on Twitter if any of them had questions

for you. And on Twitter, Nancy H. asked, have U.S. companies discuss plans to build new plans in the U.S. timeline. So do you think that this deal, obviously there's a lot that happens. It is not set in stone, but potentially could it lead to perhaps more manufacturing in the U.S.? Well, here's the thing. Manufacturing jobs are actually up right now. This year, I think, I just looked at the statistics today, the U.S. has added 139,000 manufacturing jobs since January, so that's huge. And unemployment is at the lowest rate that it's been in many, many years. And so we're looking at a great environment to do business here in America. Now, one thing that this concluded renegotiation can result in is increased certainty in the North American market

and in the United States. When businesses know that some sort of NAFTA agreement is, still going to be in place in the future, they're going to be more likely to be building factories and hiring workers in America. Tori, when it comes to tariffs, the U.S. has imposed many on Canada and Mexico this year. Where does that stand with this new agreement? Well, this is one of the unfortunate aspects of the result of this renegotiation. You know, the administration said to begin with that these tariffs were a negotiating tactic and that once we reached a new NAFTA, they would remove the tariffs on Canada and Mexico.

and that actually hasn't happened yet, and it's unclear on whether or not the administration will really eliminate these tariffs. And that's really a problem because what it does is that results in prices for steel and aluminum in the United States being higher. They're 50% higher than world prices, 50% higher than prices in Europe. And that just makes it so that our manufacturers that use steel and aluminum as a means of production, they're going to be less competitive because it will increase the price of their final goods that they want to export. Now, I understand this news has some big implications if you're a dairy farmer. Could you perhaps expound upon that? Yeah, so the dairy details are a little bit unclear, and I haven't totally dug into that chapter yet.

You haven't read all 1,700 pages before doing this podcast in like six hours? This is unbelievable. Okay. Not yet. But it looks like the administration did make some gains in regards to dairy. And that's really promising because anything that we can do to help lower tariffs and non-tariff barriers for U.S. exporters is a positive thing. So I look forward to looking into those details more. Tori, what comes next?

I know that it is an incredibly, like you just said, there are so many pages and things to tackle. But after all the analysis comes through, what can we expect to hear from the research side, from you and other experts, but also what's next for the administration to do? Well, I'd say that right now is the NAFTA renegotiation, USMCA. We're kind of at half time. We've reached some great points. We have a text, but there's actually still a lot left to go. The administration, the International Trade Commission, specifically within the administration, will do a full-scale economic analysis of this new agreement, and what they'll look at is the impact that it will have on jobs and the impact it will have on economic growth.

And that'll take probably about 100 days or so for that to happen. It's a very big endeavor. Heritage will also be doing its own economic analysis, but it'll be mostly focused on have we lowered tariffs, have we lowered non-tariff barriers, and have we modernized NAFTA for the 21st century? Next up after that is Congress, which really Congress has the final say when it comes to this USMCA and whether or not it will become law. And so we'll probably look at early spring, I'd say at the earliest, where the new Congress in 2019 will have the opportunity to vote on this new agreement. So in terms of our trade deals with other countries, obviously USMCA is not directly related. But do you think it, does it have a connection?

Does it possibly suggest an administration's mindset that might be applied to other trade deals? What, if anything, can we learn about the overall approach to trade from this? Well, at first glance, a lot of the modernization aspects of the USMCA actually come from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is the agreement that President Trump actually pulled the United States out of at the beginning of his term as president. So those are things like intellectual property, I think even state-owned enterprises, digital trade, a lot of these 21st century mechanisms. But what I think this does show, and we've already seen a little bit of it, the U.S. and Japan actually just announced that they're going to be conducting

negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement. And so this really kind of signals, I think, a move by the administration to at least try to advance some aspects of opening trade. I hope that those efforts are really focused on decreasing, tariffs and decreasing non-tariff barriers and not kind of producing these managed trade environments, which I have a feeling that the USMCA might have a little bit of. Tori, did you get a chance to watch President Trump speak about all of this in the Rose Garden? Yes, I did.

Did anything stand out to you in those remarks? They were quite lengthy. Yes, they were. You know, I think overall, you know, what the president has in mind for wanting to help manufacturing grow in the United States. and it was really encouraging to see him be positive about the North American aspect of this. It's not something that has been the focus in the past. And so I'm optimistic that they're very committed to getting this across the finish line.

Okay, final question. What's a better name? NAFTA or USMCA? I say NAFTA, but who knows? The USMCA kind of reminds me of the Marine Corps. And then somebody said earlier that they thought it sounded like YMCA. Right. Which I think is very exciting.

Maybe the name is like an intermediate name and the Congress will come up with a better one later. I don't know. President Trump seems very invested in it. Well, thank you for joining us, Tori. Good luck reading that. Thank you so much. Okay. Next up we're going to talk about Kanye West and how he shocked Hollywood once again.

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The training will also be streamed live. Again, it's Leadership Institute. All right, Kate, Kanye West is back in the news. He was on Saturday Night Live this past weekend. It was their premiere. And he wore a Maga hat. And he also delivered a very pro-Trump speech. A lot of it got cut off.

But luckily, there are some recordings that people in the audience took of it. So we've been able to see it. And he is getting a lot of hate to say the least, both about the hat and his speech about Trump. What do you think is going on? I mean, it's hard to know exactly what's. going on with Kanye West. And I think you've got to assume that there's a,

I don't exactly know what he's thinking and how serious he is. But I have to say, you know, when I was reading over his comments and he basically bashed the Democrats and his usual, Kanye, it was a little bit hard to follow some of it. But he suggested that they had encouraged a culture without dads among the African American community that they had encouraged a culture of welfare. And I think that's something that, you know, I was just like, gosh, it's so, refreshing to hear someone discussing this. You know, we've seen Democrats run cities, many with huge African-American populations, and it has not been an educational win, it has not been an economic

win, it has not been a safety win. Like, we are not seeing these policies do well for a lot of minority communities. And yet, this is such a daring thing to say, apparently, for Kanye, that, you know, SNL, as you mentioned, didn't really air most of it. I don't know if that was due to time constraints or just political stuff seems a little odd to me. Yeah, people are outraged. There's discussions. How is Kim Kardashian, his wife, reacting? You know, this is insane that him saying these things is such a huge, like, moment. Like, this should not be this big a deal. I know. The audience was booing him. He said when he had the hat on, they did everything they could to keep him from wearing it, you know, out on stage. And like you were saying, he makes some really good policy

points about, you know, why liberals have it wrong. But it seems like when everyone attacks him, they just focus on, oh, Trump's awful, Trump's awful. And they don't really acknowledge the substance of what he's saying. And I think that's a real loss for the dialogue we could be having. And also, when it comes to his wife, well, it doesn't really matter what he's doing. He can do whatever he wants. But also, I think people forget when it comes to criminal justice reform, she's making some real strides with President Trump to, you know, to his credit, he has been very open and they're actually getting stuff done, like freeing Alice Johnson and others. So I think people should not forget about that. True. I mean, Kim Kardashian-West has gone to a meeting at the White House, has praised President Trump for his work on this issue.

I mean, I am not aware. I could have forgotten, you know, Kardashian going to any meetings at the White House when Obama was president or enacting any positive reform. Yeah, and I think the other thing that makes this so striking is S&L is so liberal. And I've never been a huge fan of S&L. I don't really get skits. I, you know, like the way this S&L began was with a skit about Brett Kavanaugh being an angry frat boy, played by Matt Damon. And it's just a little bit like if you're going to do that. They, of course, famously had like the not even funny or deliberately not funny thing with a, I think her name is Kate McKinnon when Hillary Clinton lost, like very sad singing. And yet you won't let Kanye say his thing.

It's just sort of like, what are you guys so afraid of? You are trying to brainwash people all the time. Well, maybe you agree with President Trump's tweet that S&L is just no longer funny. I mean, I don't know that I ever found it super funny, but that's probably on me. Sorry, I do like stand-up comedy, just not SNL. Well, we will leave it there for today. Thank you so much for listening to The Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on SoundCloud, iTunes, or Google Play,

and also please leave us a review and a rating, unless you like SNL, in which case don't, because you're probably mad at us. We'll see you again tomorrow. You've been listening to the Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis, sound design by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and Thalia Rampersad. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.