Speaker Pelosi, Pass the USMCA before It’s Too Late!
Time is running out for Congress to approve the USMCA, and some members of Congress are expressing frustration with the leadership. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), previously optimistic about passage, has said he is now concerned about ratification of the USMCA: “I’m worried, very worried, for the first time… I think it’s fair to say that the clock is ticking, and time is running out.”
When people think of trade agreements, they typically think of the goods we buy from foreign countries and the goods that foreign countries buy from us. What’s not usually on the top of people’s minds is the importance of trade agreements in the area of intellectual property—patents, copyrights, data protections, and so on. Yet in terms of our nation’s future economic well-being, which is based to a large extent on our ability to out-innovate other countries, these are some of the most important aspects of trade agreements.
By holding up ratification of the USMCA and threatening to strip some of the intellectual property protections from the agreement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is putting in jeopardy the wellbeing of our nation’s innovators and, indeed, the wellbeing of our future economy.
We urge Speaker Pelosi to throw America’s innovators a lifeline and get the USMCA passed as quickly as possible—before the opportunity to do so disappears altogether.