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Nov. 30, 2018 / 1:18 PM GMT / Updated 1:26 PM GMT
By Jonathan Allen
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — The leaders of the United States, Canada and Mexico signed a new trade agreement here Friday, a development that President Donald Trump called “a truly groundbreaking achievement.”
The USMCA pact, largely a modernization of the nearly 25-year-old North America Free Trade Agreement, still must be approved by Congress — a potential challenge for Trump because Democrats take control of the House in less than five weeks.
Leading House Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have said they are worried that the deal doesn’t include strong enough enforcement mechanisms for provisions aimed at protecting labor.
Trump, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took turns praising the pact’s market access provisions, as well as its labor and environmental standards, before sitting down at a table to affix their signatures to the deal.
“All of our countries will benefit greatly,” Trump said at the signing ceremony, which was held on the margins of a G-20 summit here.
The renegotiation of NAFTA was one of his campaign pledges, and he and his aides worked hard to push Canada to the negotiating table. At times the the long-standing alliance between the two countries has been severely tested.
Trump called Trudeau “very weak & dishonest” in a tweet sent as he departed a G-7 summit in Quebec in June.
And there are still sore points in the trade relationship — most notably, stiff tariffs on certain metals.
“We need to keep working on removing the tariffs on steel and aluminum,” Trudeau said.
Earlier, Peña Nieto, who is leaving office, awarded Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner the “Order of the Aztec Eagle” for his work on the trade deal.