Senate Finance Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) predicted that United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) would easily pass the Senate.
In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday, Grassley called the trade deal “very bipartisan” and said he expects his committee to approve it with and the full Senate to vote on it within the next few days — unless the Senate begins its impeachment trial in the meantime.
“I think it will get out of committee with just one or two dissenting votes. It could be called up almost within the next ten days by Leader [Mitch] McConnell. What he doesn’t know is, when impeachment happens in the Senate, it has priority over everything.”
Watch his comments below:
“It’s going to be overwhelmingly approved,” Sen. Charles Grassley says about the USMCA trade deal. “It’s very bipartisan.” https://t.co/swOlAos9Jq pic.twitter.com/tFzZ01pVqO
— CNBC (@CNBC) January 7, 2020
“So he can schedule this pretty soon unless articles of impeachment come over, then we have a big problem,” Grassley added. “It might not be done until the end of January. But it will pass the Senate sometime within the next few days or at the most the end of this month.”
While Grassley said he couldn’t estimate what the final vote will be, he expects the USMCA to “overwhelmingly” pass the Senate.
“I can’t tell you whether it’d be 70-30 or 80-20, but it will be overwhelmingly approved. It’s very bipartisan.”
He touted the USMCA as a trade deal that would be “very good for agriculture” because it opens up agricultural exports to Canada.
Additionally, he cited a report by the U.S. International Trade Commission that said the deal is expected to create 176,000 jobs in the U.S. and add about $68 billion to the GDP.
Finally, he touted the new rules governing intellectual property and data sharing that were not covered by the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The House voted to pass the USMCA on December 19 in a 385-41 vote after more than a year of debate on the trade deal.
