“The most important improvement — the one for which workers’ advocates fought for hardest — is the facility-specific labor enforcement measures, because without those, the improved labor standards mean nothing. For the first time in any trade agreement, tariffs and fines can be imposed against specific products produced in facilities that are determined to deny workers collective-bargaining rights. If there are repeated violations, goods can be blocked at the border…

“The AFL-CIO has vehemently opposed almost every significant trade deal since NAFTA, but after playing an active role in the USMCA negotiations and forcing labor standards and enforcement improvements in Trump’s 2018 deal, they told their members, ‘We have secured an agreement that working people can proudly support.’”
Jared Bernstein, Washington Post

“Democrats seem to have secured other important concessions in the deal. The original USMCA was widely considered a giveaway to pharmaceutical companies because it guaranteed the makers of expensive biologic drugs 10 years of protection from cheaper competition. That provision, which could have made it harder for the U.S. to lower its own drug costs, is out. The new agreement also adds more enforcement on environmental rules. The deal isn’t perfect: Nancy Pelosi failed to remove protections for internet companies that could make it more difficult for the U.S. to amend its own laws…

“But, at first glance, it looks like an improvement over both the original-recipe NAFTA and the first draft of the USMCA, and it could help set better standards for America’s future trade deals.”
Jordan Weissmann, Slate

Critics, however, contend that “The United States International Trade Commission predicts the measures will succeed in the narrow purpose of shifting work to the United States, but only at a high cost: Consumers will pay more for new vehicles, resulting in fewer sales, and economic growth will suffer. There is a broader threat, too. Shifting work to Mexico has allowed American car companies to reduce costs, and to compete more effectively with foreign producers. Without NAFTA, there might be even fewer car-making jobs in the United States today. And as a result of the changes, there may be fewer in the future…

“The best argument for passage is prophylactic. President Trump has threatened to abandon NAFTA in the absence of a new deal, and the changes are less important than the part that would stay the same: a free-trade area for most goods encompassing the three largest nations of North America.”
Editorial Board, New York Times

“Just what would the USMCA do for the economy in 2020? Not much, it turns out… One of the two big economic projections on the deal, performed by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), estimated it would add 176,000 jobs to the economy over the next six years. For context, that's about as many jobs as we add in any single month of decent economic growth…

“The USMCA will add 51,000 new jobs to manufacturing, mining, and farming over its first six years of operation. For context, those three industries employ something in the vicinity of 14 million people. That's an increase of less than one percent — and not even in 2020, but spread out over six years. Similarly, employment in the auto sector would increase by about three percent over the deal's first six years. The idea that such minute changes will lead to meaningful differences that workers in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin would see and feel in their lives and communities before November 2020 seems like a stretch.”
Jeff Spross, The Week