GOP Senator Criticizes Trade Agreement as ‘Complete Capitulation to Pelosi’

Senator Pat Toomey (R- PA) criticized the USMCA trade deal reached by the Trump administration and Democrats in Congress on Meet the Press this morning.

“You may be the lone vote on the Republican side against new NAFTA, USMCA,” Chuck Todd said. “You don’t like it at all… you believe it’s a step backwards in trade.”

“We were importing even more from Mexico than we sell to them. We had a trade deficit, we have a trade deficit with Mexico. And the purpose of renegotiating NAFTA was to diminish trade with Mexico, so as to diminish the deficit,” he said. “That’s the wrong direction to go on trade.”

“Trade deficits almost always don’t matter,” Toomey added, to which Todd noted that POTUS “is obsessed with them.”

“I think the president’s mistaken on this,” Toomey said. “We’ve had trade deficits with the rest of the world for over 40 consecutive years. And what country has the biggest economy, the highest standard of living, the strongest growth, and best prospects going forward? We do. And that’s because trade deficits don’t matter. That money gets reinvested back in the United States. So unfortunately USMCA is an exercise through all kinds of new provisions to diminish trade, and that’s why I hope Republicans will reconsider this. We’ve historically recognized that we’re all better off with more open markets.”

At one point, Todd remarked that the GOP doesn’t look like “the party of free trade” under President Trump.

Toomey acknowledged that may be true of Trump himself, “but if you ask my colleagues, most of them would say they’re free traders.”

Todd said, “Every Republican senator who’s publicly talked about this feels as if [Nancy] Pelosi ate the administration’s lunch.”

Toomey acknowledged that “in the end there’s no question, it’s a complete capitulation to Pelosi, and by extension [Richard] Trumka.”

You can watch above, via NBC.