Happy Monday and welcome back to On The Money. I’m Sylvan Lane, and here’s your nightly guide to everything affecting your bills, bank account and bottom line.
See something I missed? Let me know at slane@digital-release.thehill.com or tweet me @SylvanLane. And if you like your newsletter, you can subscribe to it here: http://bit.ly/1NxxW2N.
Write us with tips, suggestions and news: slane@digital-release.thehill.com, vneedham@digital-release.thehill.com, njagoda@digital-release.thehill.com and nelis@digital-release.thehill.com. Follow us on Twitter: @SylvanLane, @VickofTheHill, @NJagoda and @NivElis.
THE BIG DEAL–US, Canada reach NAFTA deal: The U.S. and Canada have reached a deal on an updated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) after negotiators in Washington and Ottawa worked furiously into the night to meet a self-imposed midnight Sunday deadline.
The White House announced on Sunday night that Canada, Mexico and the United States have reached a deal to preserve the three-nation agreement.
{mosads}In a joint statement, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said that the new deal will “give our workers, farmers, ranchers and businesses a high-standard trade agreement that will result in freer markets, fairer trade and robust economic growth in our region.”
“It will strengthen the middle class, and create good, well-paying jobs and new opportunities for the nearly half billion people who call North America home,” the two trade ministers said.
The Hill’s Vicki Needham has the highlights here.
Reactions:
- “NAFTA is a proven success for the United States, supporting more than 2 million American manufacturing jobs and boosting agricultural exports to Canada and Mexico by 350 percent.” — Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
- “Our history of witnessing unfair trade deals destroy the lives of working families demands the highest level of scrutiny before receiving our endorsement.” — AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
- “NAFTA has had many critics over the years and its flaws are well-known. Like me, many of my colleagues did not support the deal originally. And those who did will have serious questions that they need answered before doing so again.” — Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee.
- “Manufacturers are extremely encouraged that our call for a trilateral agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico has been answered.” — Jay Timmons, National Association of Manufacturers president and CEO.
Your guide to the deal:
- The renegotiation is a major win for Trump, who made trade and getting more favorable terms for the U.S. a signature issue on the campaign trail. The new NAFTA deal is the first thing Trump can point to in terms of a concrete change from his trade policies.
- As soon as the U.S. and Mexico struck an agreement, Canada was negotiating from a position of weakness. Trump said he was comfortable moving forward on a deal without Canada, forcing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the table.
- The deal will provide dairy farmers, especially those along the border like Wisconsin, more market access to the Canadian dairy industry. This was a major sticking point in the talks and one of Trump’s main focuses throughout the negotiations.
- Under the deal, Trump does not have to remove the 25 percent tariffs on steel and 10 percent tariffs on aluminum from Canada and Mexico. That means retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods will remain in effect, negating some of the benefits of the new deal.
- Congress still has to approve the new deal, and it’s an open question whether it will. Trump said on Monday he had no idea whether lawmakers on Capitol Hill would pass the agreement next year and Democrats could pose issues for the president if they take control of Congress.
The Hill’s Vicki Needham and I break down all of that and more here.
ON TAP TOMORROW
- Senate Banking Committee: Hearing on implementation of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, 10 a.m.
- Senate Finance Committee: Hearing on the nomination of Andrew Saul to be Social Security commissioner, 10:30 a.m.
- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce hosts a two-day 2018 Small Business Conference, 12 p.m.
LEADING THE DAY
Trump takes victory lap after NAFTA deal: President Trump on Monday took touted a last-minute deal with Canada to salvage the three-nation North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), even as he predicted that Democrats in Congress might stymie the pact.
Surrounded by top administration officials in the White House Rose Garden, Trump called the reworked agreement “the most important trade deal we’ve ever made by far.”
The president said it fulfills his campaign pledge to replace NAFTA, which he called “perhaps the world trade deal ever made,” and claimed it will transform the U.S. back into a “manufacturing powerhouse.”
“Throughout the campaign I promised to renegotiate NAFTA and today we have kept that promise.” he said during a news conference, calling it “truly historic news for our nation and indeed the world.” The Hill’s Jordan Fabian takes us to the Rose Garden reverie.
CFPB official says he regrets blog posts dismissing racism: A top Consumer Financial Protection Bureau official under fire for inflammatory blog posts he wrote in 2004 told colleagues Monday that he regrets those writings and has matured since he dismissed most hate crimes as hoaxes and questioned if using the “n-word” was racist.
CFPB policy director for supervision, enforcement and fair lending Eric Blankenstein addressed the growing controversy over his 14-year-old anonymous screeds in a Monday email to bureau employees obtained by The Hill.
Blankenstein, who oversees the CFPB’s efforts to combat racial discrimination, asked bureau colleagues to judge him for his work enforcing fair lending laws at the agency, not blog posts he wrote as a 25-year-old college student.
“The tone and framing of my statements reflected poor judgement,” Blankenstein wrote. “But poor judgement in my choice of words back then, or how I framed my arguments, does not make me a racist or a sexist.”
I’ve got more on his walkback and the backlash here.
GOOD TO KNOW
- President Trump’s pick to lead the IRS was sworn in Monday, officially taking the reins of an agency that faces a host of challenges.
- Congress quietly allowed the farm bill to expire over the weekend despite House Republicans’ hopes they would come to a consensus and pass a reauthorization ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline.
- Tesla’s stock rebounded Monday morning following weekend news that CEO Elon Musk had reached a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over charges of fraud stemming from a series of unusual tweets he sent in August.
- The rollout of 5G high-speed wireless networks are expected to usher in an era of super-fast internet speeds, but many experts worry that the new technology will only leave poor urban communities further behind.
- A planned sit-down between the U.S. and China set for next month could be scrapped amid an increasingly fraught relationship between the two countries.
- The American Petroleum Institute (API) is backing the agreement to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), calling the proposal “critical.”
- The latest installment in The Hill’s series on the 2017 tax overhaul explores how Republicans managed to get a bill through both chambers with little room for error and a narrow Senate majority.
ODDS AND ENDS
- Three companies that provide cross-border payment services plan to use technology developed by startup Ripple that employs cryptocurrency XRP to speed transactions, according to Reuters.
- General Electric ousted its CEO and said it would fall short of profit forecasts this year as the industrial titan struggles to recover from years of downsizing.